"No, sir!" replied that virtuous individual, with sharp emphasis; "you have had a room of me once too often. It's not my way to have gamblers, bloats, and jail-birds hanging around my place--'not if the court knows herself; and she thinks she does.' You've done all you could to give my respectable, first-class house the name of a low gambling hell. The evening paper even hints that someone connected with the house had a hand in your being plucked. You've damaged me hundreds of dollars, and if you ever show your face within my doors again I'll have you arrested."
Haldane was stung to the quick, and retorted vengefully: "Perhaps the paper is right. I was introduced to the blacklegs in your bar-room, and by a scamp who was a habitual lounger here. They got their cards of you, and, having made me drunk, and robbed me in one of your rooms, they had no trouble in getting away."
"Do you make any such charge against me?" bellowed the landlord, starting savagely forward.
"I say, as the paper says, perhaps," replied Haldane, standing his ground, but quivering with rage. "I shall give you no ground for a libel suit; but if you will come out in the street you shall have all the satisfaction you want; and if you lay the weight of your finger on me here. I'll damage you worse than I did last night."
"How dare you come here to insult me?" said the landlord, but keeping now at a safe distance from the incensed youth. "Some one, go for a policeman, for the fellow is out of jail years too soon."
"I did not come here to insult you, I came, as every one has a right to come, to ask for a room, for which I meant to pay your price, and you insulted me."
"Well, you can't have a room."
"If you had quietly said that and no more in the first place, there would have been no trouble. But I want you and every one else to understand that I won't be struck, if I am down;" and he turned on his heel and strode out of the house, followed by a volley of curses from the enraged landlord and the bartender, who had smirked so agreeably the evening before.
A distorted account of this scene--published in the "Courier" the following day, in connection with a detailed account of the whole miserable affair--added considerably to the ill repute that already burdened Haldane; for it was intimated that he was as ready for a street brawl as for any other species of lawlessness.