"Drunk and disorderly, eh?" a second voice added.
The newcomers were big men, men who carried themselves with the unmistakable air of authority. He attempted to explain and one of them held his arms while the other man searched him and found the Spanish pistol.
"Oh. Carrying a heater, eh? That happens to be against the law, chum."
"Ha," Ephraim laughed at him. "Also ho." He quoted from memory Article II of the amendments Mr. Henry had read him in the Pig and Whistle:
"'A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed'."
"Now he's a militia," the plain-clothes man said.
"He's a nut," his partner added.
"Get him out of here," Mine Host said.
Ephraim sat on the bunk in his cell, deflated. This was a fine resurrection for a member of the First Congress.