Carroll took out his cigar-case and extended it to Lee, who took a cigar, bit the end off, and scratched a match.  Carroll handed the case mechanically to the postmaster and Drake, who were near.  They refused, and he took one himself, as if he did not realize what he was doing, and lit it, his calm, impassively smiling face never changing.  He might have been lighting a bomb instead of a cigar, for all the actual realization of the action which he had.  He accepted a light from Lee, who had lit his first with trembling haste.  At the first puff which he gave, at the first evidence of the fragrant aroma in the room, one turbulent spirit, which had hitherto remained under restraint, burst bounds and overwhelmed all besides.  Even Minna Eddy, who was fast warming to a new outburst, even Madame Griggs, who had both hands pressed to her skinny throat because of a lump of emotion there, and whose sunken temples were beating to the sight under the shade of her protuberant frizzes, looked in a hush of wonder and alarm at this furious champion of his own wrongs.  Even the two butchers and the dry-goods merchant looked away from the glowing Oriental web upon which they stood.  The weeping stenographer sat with her damp little wad of lace-edged handkerchief in her hand and stared at him with her reddened eyes; the other held her flaccid purse, and looked at the speaker.  Now and then she nudged violently the friend, who did not seem to notice it.

Tappan, the milkman, arose to his feet.  He had been sitting with a stiff sprawl in the corner of a small divan.  He arose when the fragrance of that Havana cigar smote his nostrils like the odor of battle.  He was in great boots stained with the red shale, for the roads outside Banbridge were heavy from a recent rain.  He was collarless, his greasy coat hung loosely over his dingy flannel shirt.  He was unshaven, and his face was at once grim and sardonic, bitter and raging.  It was the face of an impotent revolutionist, who cursed his impotence, his lack of weapons, his wrong environments for his fierce spirit.  He belonged in a country at war.  He had the misfortune to be in a country at peace.  He belonged in a field of labor wherein weapons and armed men, sown by the need of justice, sprang from the soil.  He was in a bucolic pasture, with no appeal.  He was a striker with nothing save fate against which to strike.  He raged behind prison-bars of circumstance.  Now, for once, was an enemy for his onslaught, although even here he was restricted.  He was held in check by his ignoble need.  He feared lest, in smiting with all the force at his command, the blow recoil upon himself.  He feared lest he lose all where he might lose only part.  But when he began to speak his caution left him.  There was real fire in the grim, unshaven man; the honest fire of resentment against wrong, the spirit of self-defence against odds.  He was big enough to disregard self-interest in his defence, and he was impressive.  He sniffed as a preliminary to his speech, and there was in that sniff fury, sarcasm, and malignancy.  Then he opened his mouth, and before the words came a laugh or the travesty of one.  There was something menacing in his laugh.  Then he spoke.