The man of no memories gave no heed to the men on the street who looked at him askance. He sauntered along unconsciously, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. With a casual glance at the hotel across the way, he entered a saloon, where a score of patrons were standing at the bar, or shaking dice noisily at the tables ranged against the wall. The bartender nodded to his greeting—the slightest possible nod. The dog who had followed him into the place leaped up against him, its forepaws on his knee.
"Brandy, if you please," said the new arrival, and poured indolently from the bottle set before him.
The conversation in the room had chilled. To its occupants the man who had entered was no stranger; he was Hugh Stires, returned unwelcome to a place from which he had lately vanished. Moreover, what they felt for him was not alone the crude hatred which the honest toiler feels for the trickster who gains a living by devious knaveries. There was an uglier suspicion afloat of Hugh Stires! A blue-shirted miner called gruffly for his score, threw down the silver and went out, slamming the swing-door. Another glowered at the new arrival, and ostentatiously drew his glass farther along the bar.
The new-comer regarded none of them. He poured his glass slowly full, sipped from it, and holding it in his hand, turned and glanced deliberately about the place. He looked at everybody in the room, suddenly sensible of the hostile atmosphere, with what seemed a careless amusement. Then he raised his glass.
"Will you join me, gentlemen?" he said.
There was but one response. A soiled, shambling figure, blear, white-haired and hesitating, with a battered violin under its arm, slouched from a corner and grasped eagerly for the bottle the bartender contemptuously pushed toward him. No one else moved.
The man who waited studied the roomful with a disdainful smile, with eyes sparkling like steel points. He as wholly misunderstood their dislike as they misconstrued his effrontery—did not guess that to them he stood as one whom they had known and had good reason to despise. Their attitude struck him as so manifestly unreasonable and absurd—so primarily the sulky hatred of the laborious boor for the manifestly more flippant member of society—that it diverted him. He had drunk at bar-rooms in many strange places; never before had he encountered a community like this. His veiled, insolent smile swept the room.
"A spirit of brotherhood almost Christian!" he said. "If I observe that the town's brandy is of superior vintage to its breeding, let me not be understood as complimenting the former without reservation. I have drunk better brandy; I have never seen worse manners!"
He looked smilingly at the soiled figure beside him—a fragment of flotsam tossed on the tide of failure. "I erred in my general salutation," he said. "Gentility is, after all, less a habit than an instinct." He lifted his glass—to the castaway. "I drink to the health of the only other gentleman present," he said, and tossed the drink off.