"It was a different story on the night when you and Ginger Simpson fought about her in the Saltmarket," cut in some individual who was sitting in the bed sewing patches on his trousers.
"I've fought my man and knocked him out many a time, when there wasn't a wench within ten miles of me," cried Moleskin. "Doesn't ev'ryone here believe that?"
"But that woman in Clydebank!" persisted Clancy.
"Have you seen Ginger Simpson of late?" said Moleskin, making an effort to change the subject, for he observed that he was cornered. It was evident that some of the inmates of the shack had learned facts relating to his career, which Moleskin would have preferred to remain unknown.
"Last winter I met him in Greenock," said Sandy MacDonald, a man with a wasting disease, who lay in a corner bunk at the end of the shack. "He told me all about the fight in the Saltmarket, and that Gourock Ellen——"
"But the Clydebank woman——"
"Listen!" said Joe, interrupting Clancy's remark. "They're at it outside yet. It must be a hell of a fight between the two of them."
He referred to Blasting Mick and Ben the Moocher, who were still busily engaged in thrashing one another outside, and in the silence that followed Joe's remark I could hear distinctly the thud of many blows given and taken by the two combatants in the darkness.
"Let them fight; that's nothin' to us," said Red Billy, taking a bite from the end of his plug. "But for my own part I would like to know where Gourock Ellen is now."
Joe made no answer; he was visibly annoyed, and I saw his fists closing tightly.