The place was dingy and cold.  The floor was sanded.  The two or three guests were huddled about a stove—­one asleep upon a bench, the others smoking short pipes; and their hard, cadaverous faces and sullen eyes turned no welcome upon Abel when he entered, but they looked at him quickly, as if they suspected him to be a policeman or magistrate, and as if they had reason not to wish to see either.  But in a moment they saw it was not a sober man, whoever he was.  Abel tried to stand erect, to look dignified, to smooth himself into apparent sobriety.  He vaguely hoped to give the impression that he was a gentleman belated upon his way home, and taking a simple glass for comfort.

“Why, Dick, don’t yer know him?” said one, in a low voice, to his neighbor.

“No, d——­ him! and don’t want to.”

“I do, though,” replied the first man, still watching the new-comer curiously.

“Why, Jim, who in h——­ is it?” asked Dick.

“That air man’s our representative.  That ain’t nobody else but Abel Newt.”

“Well,” muttered Jim, sullenly, as he surveyed the general appearance of Abel while he stood drinking a glass of brandy—­“pure as imported”—­at the counter—­“well, we’ve done lots for him:  what’s he going to do for us?  We’ve put that man up tremendious high; d’ye think he’s going to kick away the ladder?”

He half grumbled to himself, half asked his neighbor Dick.  They were both a little drunk, and very surly.

“I dunno.  But he’s vastly high and mighty—­that I know; and, by ——­, I’ll tell him so!” said Dick, energetically clasping his hands, bringing one of them down upon the bench on which he sat, and clenching every word with an oath.

“Hallo, Jim! let’s make him give us somethin’ to drink!”

The two constituents approached the representative whose election they had so ardently supported.

“Well, Newt, how air ye?”

Abel Newt was confounded at being accosted in such a place at such an hour.  He raised his heavy eyes as he leaned unsteadily against the counter, and saw two beetle-browed, square-faced, disagreeable-looking men looking at him with half-drunken, sullen insolence.

“Hallo, Newt! how air ye?” repeated Jim, as he confronted the representative.

Abel looked at him with shaking head, indignant and scornful.

“Who the devil are you?” he asked, at length, blurring the words as he spoke, and endeavoring to express supreme contempt.

“We’re the men that made yer!” retorted Dick, in a shrill, tipsy voice.

The liquor-seller, who was leaning upon his counter, was instantly alarmed.  He knew the signs of impending danger.  He hurried round, and said,

“Come, come; I’m going to shut up!  Time to go home; time to go home!”

The three men at the counter did not move.  As they stood facing each other the brute fury kindled more and more fiercely in each one of them.