“It can’t be proven,” he was yelling.  “I defy any sane politician whose eyes are not blinded by party prejudices, whose opinions are not warped by a personal bias, to substantiate such a statement.  Look at your facts, look at your figures.  I am a free American citizen, ain’t I?  I pay my taxes to support a good government, don’t I?  It’s a contract between me and the government, ain’t it?  Well, then, by damn! if the authorities do not or will not afford me protection for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then my obligations are at an end; I withhold my taxes.  I do—­I do—­I say I do.  What?” He glared about him, seeking opposition.

“That’s nonsense,” observed Heise, quietly.  “Try it once; you’ll get jugged.”  But this observation of the harness-maker’s roused Marcus to the last pitch of frenzy.

“Yes, ah, yes!” he shouted, rising to his feet, shaking his finger in the other’s face.  “Yes, I’d go to jail; but because I—­I am crushed by a tyranny, does that make the tyranny right?  Does might make right?”

“You must make less noise in here, Mister Schouler,” said Frenna, from behind the bar.

“Well, it makes me mad,” answered Marcus, subsiding into a growl and resuming his chair.  “Hullo, Mac.”

“Hullo, Mark.”

But McTeague’s presence made Marcus uneasy, rousing in him at once a sense of wrong.  He twisted to and fro in his chair, shrugging first one shoulder and then another.  Quarrelsome at all times, the heat of the previous discussion had awakened within him all his natural combativeness.  Besides this, he was drinking his fourth cocktail.

McTeague began filling his big porcelain pipe.  He lit it, blew a great cloud of smoke into the room, and settled himself comfortably in his chair.  The smoke of his cheap tobacco drifted into the faces of the group at the adjoining table, and Marcus strangled and coughed.  Instantly his eyes flamed.

“Say, for God’s sake,” he vociferated, “choke off on that pipe!  If you’ve got to smoke rope like that, smoke it in a crowd of muckers; don’t come here amongst gentlemen.”

“Shut up, Schouler!” observed Heise in a low voice.

McTeague was stunned by the suddenness of the attack.  He took his pipe from his mouth, and stared blankly at Marcus; his lips moved, but he said no word.  Marcus turned his back on him, and the dentist resumed his pipe.

But Marcus was far from being appeased.  McTeague could not hear the talk that followed between him and the harnessmaker, but it seemed to him that Marcus was telling Heise of some injury, some grievance, and that the latter was trying to pacify him.  All at once their talk grew louder.  Heise laid a retaining hand upon his companion’s coat sleeve, but Marcus swung himself around in his chair, and, fixing his eyes on McTeague, cried as if in answer to some protestation on the part of Heise: 

“All I know is that I’ve been soldiered out of five thousand dollars.”