The large interior was portioned off upon three sides into stalls containing tables like those I had seen in London. Most of the chairs at these tables were occupied by persons drinking; but by far the greater number of people present stood mug in hand in the open center of the room. Upon my entrance there was a sudden lull in the conversation; then they began to whisper among themselves and look at me. Every person in the room was soon staring at me as if I were some public curiosity on exhibition. There was a hostile expression in their eyes, too, that I could not comprehend. I wondered whether, after all, this was really a public ordinary. Had I made a mistake and blundered into some private place of meeting? On one side of the tap-room in plain sight hung the governor’s license to keep open house. No, I had not made a mistake. What, then, was the meaning of this obvious turning of eyes in my direction? How could I account for the hostile contempt they showed towards me, an utter stranger? I crossed the room to where I saw a vacant chair in one of the stalls. At once two men who were also seated at the table I was moving towards, arose, making a great parade of their efforts to get out of my way. The laugh that followed this treatment vexed me much. I called out in an ill temper to the host to fetch me some rum and not to keep strangers waiting. “Have you a room to let?” I inquired as he set my liquor down on the table in front of me. “No,” he replied curtly, turning on his heel, and showing me his back across the room. Shortly the attention fell off from me somewhat and the inmates began to talk again. Kirstoffel, as they called the host, was a merry fellow. He soon seemed to repent of the rude way in which he had answered my question, for he saw when I took out my purse that I had plenty of ready money. Taking advantage of a moment when attention was diverted to the some disturbance in the street, he came across the room to me and made a qualified apology. “Gott, man,” he began. “Your demand was too sudden. I have got no rooms here to let out. They were all thrown into one for that what-you-call-it Jacobite Club to meet in. No, I have no rooms.” As he seemed to be friendly, I asked him why my entrance had been the cause of so much attention. He was about to answer when the people who had been temporarily attracted to the door came pouring back. The tapster laid his finger on his lips, shook his head at me in a warning sort of way, and then stalked haughtily back to his place as if to affect his customers with the largeness of his contempt for me.