ly some
bit of information flashed around the board, and I saw men's eyes open
wide and white as they looked at me.

I have said it was the age of bullies. It was the age when men of
physical prowess walked down the street shouldering lesser men into
the gutter, and the lesser men had never a word to say for themselves.
It was the age when if you expressed opinions contrary to those of a
bully he was confidently expected to kill you or somehow maltreat you.

Of all that company of genius there now seemed to be only one
gentleman who was not a-tremble. It was the little scientist Doctor
Chord. He looked at me with a bright and twinkling eye; suddenly he
grinned broadly. I could not but burst into laughter when I noted the
appetite with which he enjoyed the confusion and alarm of his friends.

"Come, Fullbil! Come, Bobbs! Come, Fancher! Where are all your pretty
wits?" he cried; for this timid little man's impudence increased
mightily amid all this helpless distress. "Here's the dignity and
power of learning of you, in God's truth. Here's knowledge enthroned,
fearless, great! Have ye all lost your tongues?"

And he was for going on to worry them, but that I called out to him,--

"Sir," said I mildly, "if it please you, I would not have the
gentlemen disturbed over any little misunderstanding of a pleasant
evening. As regards quarrelling, I am all milk and water myself. It
reminds me of an occasion in Ireland once when--" Here I recounted a
story which Father Donovan always began on after more than three
bottles, and to my knowledge he had never succeeded in finishing it.
But this time I finished it. "And," said I, "the fellow was sitting
there drinking with them, and they had had good fun with him, when of
a sudden he up and spoke. Says he: ''Tis God's truth I never expected
in all my life to be an evening in the company of such a lot of scurvy
rat-eaters,' he says to them. 'And,' says he, 'I have only one word
for that squawking old masquerading peacock that sits at the head of
the table,' says he. 'What little he has of learning I could put in my
eye without going blind,' says he. 'The old curmudgeon!' says he. And
with that he arose and left the room, afterward becoming the King of
Galway and living to a great age."

This amusing tale created a sickly burst of applause, in the midst of
which I bowed myself from the room.

CHAPTER XIX

On my way to my chamber I met the innkeeper and casually asked him