“I dunno,” mused Lawlor, “but maybe it ought to lie between ’Alice, Ben Bolt,’ and ‘Annie Laurie.’  What d’you choose, partner?”

He turned to Bard.

“‘Alice, Ben Bolt,’ by all means.  I don’t think he could manage the Scotch.”

“Start!” commanded Lawlor.

The sailor closed his eyes, tilted back his head, twisted his face to a hideous grimace, and then opening his shapeless mouth emitted a tremendous wail which took shape in the following words: 

     “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,
      Sweet Alice, with hair like the sunshine—­”

“Shut up!” roared Lawlor.

It required a moment for Shorty to unkink the congested muscles of his face.

“What the hell’s the matter now?” he inquired.

“Whoever heard of ‘hair like the sunshine’?  There ain’t no such thing possible.  ‘Hair so brown,’ that’s what the song says.  Shorty, we got more feelin’ for our ears than to let you go on singin’ an’ showin’ your ignerance.  G’wan back to the kitchen!”

Kilrain drew a long breath, regarded Lawlor again with that considerate, expectant eye, and then turned on his heel and strode from the room.  Back to Bard came fragments of tremendous cursing of an epic breadth and a world-wide inclusiveness.

“Got to do things like this once in a while to keep ’em under my thumb,” Lawlor explained genially.

With all his might Bard was struggling to reconcile this big-handed vulgarian with his mental picture of the man who could write for an epitaph:  “Here sleeps Joan, the wife of William Drew.  She chose this place for rest.”  But the two ideas were not inclusive.

He said aloud:  “Aren’t you afraid that that black-eyed fellow will run a knife between your ribs one of these dark nights?”

“Who?  My ribs?” exclaimed Lawlor, nevertheless stirring somewhat uneasily in his chair.  “Nope, they know that I’m William Drew.  They may be hard, but they know I’m harder.”

“Oh,” drawled the other, and his eyes held with uncomfortable steadiness on the rosy face of Lawlor.  “I understand.”

To cover his confusion Lawlor seized his glass.

“Here’s to you—­drinkin’ deep.”

And he tossed off the mighty potion.  Bard had poured only a few drops into his glass; he had too much sympathy for his empty stomach to do more.  His host leaned back, coughing, with tears of pleasure in his eyes.

“Damn me!” he breathed reverently.  “I ain’t touched stuff like this in ten years.”

“Is this a new stock?” inquired Bard, apparently puzzled.

“This?” said Lawlor, recalling his position with a start.  “Sure it is; brand new.  Yep, stuff ain’t been in more’n five days.  Smooth, ain’t it?  Medicine, that’s what I call it; a gentleman’s drink—­goes down like water.”

Observing a rather quizzical light in the eyes of Bard, he felt that he had probably been making a few missteps, and being warmed greatly at the heart by the whisky, he launched forth in a new phase of the conversation.