"It's sorry the boss'll be to hear of yer fallin' here at his door, an' he not there to pick ye up," he remarked. "But ye'd better bide till he comes in again. Ye'll not get your breath back so easy either—I've been knocked out myself, an' I know—though it wa'n't no ice that downed me."
"So Pat M'Cann wanted to see me, did he?" asked Malone, trying to draw a long breath and finding it impossible, as the bruised muscles of his back refused to yield. "Oh—well, then I'll sit me down here and wait."
"There's yer old place in the corner," Tom responded.
"I'll smoke a pipe," said Malone, moving away, "if I haven't broke it in my fall. No; I've got it right enough," he added, taking the brier-wood from the breast-pocket of his coat.
As Malone was shuffling slowly forward towards a table in a corner of the saloon, the street-door was pushed open and the owner of the barroom entered—a tall man, with a high hat and a fur-trimmed overcoat. M'Cann went straight to the bar.
"Tom," he asked, "how many of those labor-tickets have I now in the glass there?"
Tom looked in a tumbler on the top shelf of a rack against the wall behind him. "There's five of 'em left," he answered.
"Barry M'Cormack will be in before we close and he'll ask ye for them, and ye'll give him three of them," said the owner of the saloon. "Tell him it's all I have. An' if Jerry O'Connor is here again wantin' me to go bail for his brother in the Tombs, ye must stand him off. I don't want to do it, ye see, an' I don't want neither to tell him I don't want to."
"An' what will I tell him, then?" asked the barkeeper. "Hadn't I better say ye've gone to Washington to see the Sinator?"
"Tell him what you please," responded M'Cann, "but be easy with him."