his public house as an adjunct of his farm, and more for sociability
than gain. He was in a depressed and angry mood, for one of his eyes
was closed, and the other battered about the rim and beginning to
turn black and blue.

He knew McHenry, for both had been in these seas half their lives.

"In all my sixty years," he said, "I have not been assaulted quite
so viciously. I asked him for what he owed me, and the next I knew he
was shutting out the light with his fists. I will go to the gendarme
for a contravention against that villain. And right now I will fix
him in my book."

"Why, who hit you, and what did you do?" asked McHenry.

"That damned Londoner, Hobson," said McTavish. "He was my guest here
several years ago, and ate and drank well for a month or two when he
hadn't a sou marquis. I needed a little money to-day, and meeting him
up the road, I demanded my account. He is thirty years younger than me,
and I would have kept my eyes, but he leaped at me like a wild dog,
and knocked me down and pounded me in the dirt."

I sympathized with McTavish, though McHenry snickered. The Scot
went into an inner room and brought back a dirty book, a tattered
register of his guests. He turned a number of pages--there were only
a few guests to a twelvemonth--and, finding his assailant's name,
wrote in capital letters against it, "THIEF."

"There," he said with a magnificent gesture. "Let the whole world
read and know the truth!"