"Come on!" cried Piper wildly laughing, still on his back and striking out with his feet. "Come on! One down, t'other on!"
"He's proper and fit now," said Moriarty, his face streaming with gore, but seemingly utterly oblivious of the fact. "Come on, and we'll run him down to the p'leece office before the fight's out of him."
He rushed in on the resisting one, got another kick—this time in the stomach—and, seizing the maniac by the collar of his coat, got him on his legs, using him as gently as though he were dealing with a refractory child. Another man, had he received the kicks that Moriarty had received, would have paid them back in ill-treatment, but Moriarty never lost his temper, and it was a rule of honour with him that a drunken man should be treated with all possible tenderness and consideration. He would just as soon have struck a priest, a woman, or a child as a man in liquor.
Once on his legs, all fight seemed to die out of Mr. Piper. Wild hilarity and attempts at song took the place of bellicosity. Bad language also came to the surface, and found expression.
"He'll do," said Moriarty. "He'll do. Andy, clip howld of his other arm. Now, then, open the door, and down to the village with him. The thing that's thrubblin' me is he's gone undher so quick that maybe he's only shamming."
"Faith," said Andy, "I know why he's gone undher so quick. It's be raison of me givin' him the second glass nate. I forgot to put the wather in it."
Miss Grimshaw, who had been unable to tear herself away from the window, had increased her powers of observation by opening the sash. She heard Moriarty's voice, and the voices of the others. What they could be doing to the bailiff was quite beyond her power of imagination to discover.
Then, as time passed on, she heard laughter. Piper was laughing. She knew the voices of the two others too well to make a mistake. Such long-continued laughter she had never heard before. Then the laughter ceased, and she heard the bailiff's voice crying to the others to come on. After this came more laughter and snatches of song.
Greatly wondering, she waited and watched till, the door of the loose-box bursting open, Andy and Moriarty emerged, supporting a drunken man between them.