[He lifts up his coat, and discovers a piece missing from the tail, and is about to take it off for a closer inspection when the publican enters with the whiskey.

DRISCOLL (as he places the whiskey upon the table) This is your drink, stranger, and believe me, you couldn’t get a better drop of whiskey in the whole United Kingdom, not even if you went to the King’s palace itself for it.

LOGAN
’Tis good, you say.

DRISCOLL
None better, and wonderful stuff to put heart into a
man.

LOGAN (drinks it off)
’Tis the good flavor it has surely. (Pauses awhile)
I think I’ll have another, for ’tis plenty of heart I’ll
be wantin’ before the day goes to its close.

DRISCOLL ‘Tis easy to feel plucky in the mornin’, but ’tis a brave man who can feel happy at the heel of day, especially if he has an uneasy conscience and an empty stomach.

LOGAN Hunger plays the devil with us all.  A man with an empty stomach, an empty purse, and an empty house, except for a scoldin’ wife, can never be happy.

DRISCOLL That’s so, but if that’s all you have to contend with, you haven’t much to worry about.  Sure I thought by your looks and the way you spoke that you might have killed a man and had the bloodhounds after you.

LOGAN A man’s conscience is worse than having bloodhounds after him, if he has to spend months in idleness through no fault of his own, and no one to look for sympathy from but a scoldin’ wife.

DRISCOLL The Lord protect us from scoldin’ wives, anyway.  They’re the scourge of Hell.  But there are worse things than being married to a wife with no control over her temper.  You might be like the thief who broke into the house of Michael Cassily and stole his grandfather’s watch and chain and silver candlestick.

LOGAN
And when did all this happen?

DRISCOLL
During the small hours of the mornin’.

LOGAN
That was a damnable thing to do.

DRISCOLL ‘Twas more foolish than anythin’ else, because, if Michael Cassily should ever lay hands upon the man who stole his belongings, he’d shoot at him the way you’d shoot at a rabbit in a ditch and kill him as dead as one of Egypt’s kings.

LOGAN
The Lord save us!  You don’t mean what you say.

DRISCOLL
I do, and every word of it.  And a sure shot he is too. 
Indeed ’tis said that nothing in the sky or on the land
could escape him when he has a gun in his hand.

LOGAN
I heard before comin’ to this town that he was a very
quiet and inoffensive man.

DRISCOLL And so he is a quiet man when he’s left alone.  But when his temper is up, the devil himself is a gentleman to him.

LOGAN
I’ll have another glass of whiskey.
[Exit the publican.  While he is away, Logan looks at
the torn part of his coat, and a stranger enters.