Then somebody said, “It's nothink, sir.” And somebody else said, “'Es on'y drunk, and wantin' to pench 'is mother.” Without listening to this explanation John Storm had laid hold of the young man by the collar and was dragging him, struggling and fuming, from the door.
“What's going on?” he demanded. “Will nobody speak?”
Then a poor swaggering imitation of a man came up out of the cellar of a house that stood next to the disused church, and a comely young woman carrying a baby followed close behind him. He had a gin bottle in his hands, and with a wink he said: “A christenin'—that's what's going on. 'Ave a kepple o' pen'orth of 'ollands, old gel?”
At this sally the crowd recovered its audacity and laughed, and the drunken man began to say that he could “knock spots out of any bloomin' parson, en' now bloomin' errer.”
But the young fellow with the gin bottle broke in again. “What's yer gime, mister? Preach the gawspel? Give us trecks? This is my funeral, down't ye know, and I'd jest like to hear.”
The little foreigners were enjoying the parson-baiting, and the drunken man's courage was rising to fever heat. “I'll give 'im one-two between the eyes if 'e touches me again.” Then he flung himself on the pawnshop like a battering ram, the howling inside, which had subsided, burst out afresh, and finally the door was broken down.
Half a minute afterward the crowd was making a wavering dance about the two men. “Look out, ducky!” the young fellow shouted to John. The warning came too late—John went reeling backward from a blow.
“Now, my lads, who says next?” cried the drunken ruffian. But before the words were out of his mouth there was a growl, a plunge, a snarl, and he was full length on the street with the bloodhound's muzzle at his throat.
The crowd shrieked and began to fly. Only one person seemed to remain. It was an elderly woman, with dry and straggling gray hair. She had come out of the pawnshop and thrown herself on the dog in an effort to rescue the man underneath, crying: “My son—oh, my son! It'll kill him! Tyke the beast away!”
John Storm called the dog off, and the man got up unhurt, and nearly sober. But the woman continued to moan over the ruffian and to assail John and his dog with bitter insults. “We want no truck with parsons 'ere,” she shouted.