Paddy was for opening his mouth wide immediately, but I checked him.
"I would see this great man," said I to the landlord, "but I am so
timid by nature I fear to meet his eagle eye. Is there no way by which
we could observe him in secret at our leisure?"

"There be one way," remarked the landlord after deliberation. I had
passed him a silver coin. He led us to a little parlour back of the
taproom. Here a door opened into the tap itself, and in this door was
cut a large square window so that the good man of the inn could
sometimes sit at his ease in his great chair in the snug parlour and
observe that his customers had only that for which they were paying.
It is a very good plan, for I have seen many a worthy man become a
rogue merely because nobody was watching him. My father often was
saying that if he had not been narrowly eyed all his young life, first
by his mother and then by his wife, he had little doubt but what he
might have been engaged in dishonest practices sooner or later.

A confident voice was doing some high talking in the taproom. I peered
through the window, but at first I saw only a collection of gaping
yokels, poor bent men with faces framed in straggly whiskers. Each had
a pint pot clutched with a certain air of determination in his right
hand.

Suddenly upon our line of vision strode the superb form of Jem
Bottles. A short pipe was in his mouth, and he gestured splendidly
with a pint pot. "More of the beer, my dear," said he to a buxom maid.
"We be all rich in Ireland. And four of them set upon me," he cried
again to the yokels. "All noblemen, in fine clothes and with
sword-hilts so flaming with jewels an ordinary man might have been
blinded. 'Stop!' said I. 'There be more of your friends somewhere.
Call them.' And with that--"

"'And with that'?" said I myself, opening the door and stepping in
upon him. "'And with that'?" said I again. Whereupon I smote him a
blow which staggered him against the wall, holding his crown with both
hands while his broken beer-pot rolled on the floor. Paddy was dancing
with delight at seeing some other man cuffed, but the landlord and the
yokels were nearly dead of terror. But they made no sound; only the
buxom girl whimpered.

"There is no cause for alarm," said I amiably. "I was only greeting an
old friend. 'Tis a way I have. And how wags the world with you,
O'Ruddy?"

"I am not sure for the moment," replied Jem Bottles ruefully. "I must
bide till it stop