The song died instantly, but in its place rose a Babel of tongues. Thomas's cry drew all eyes upon him. Involuntarily some of the less hardened assumed airs of propriety, but the majority of the men started in anger, and a few of the women began to laugh and jeer. "Damn your impudence, what do you want here?" shouted a copper-faced little wretch, who had been lying half asleep in a woman's lap near the door. "Get out of this," roared another, and as Thomas made no sign the abuse grew general. The wits of the party cracked jokes over the "heavy father doing the pathetic business," and so on, but amid the din the peasant got close to the table, where his child sat. The instant his call reached her ears, Sally turned a terror-struck gaze upon him, and then buried her face in her hands. He could see she wept, for the sobs shook her, but to his further entreaty to come away she made no response, and he was trying to pull the table aside so as to reach her, when he was roughly seized by the brothel keeper, who had rushed up from the kitchen to see what the noise was about. With an oath he pulled Thomas back. "What the devil do you want here?" he screeched. "Clear out, or d--n you, I'll give you in custody." The peasant's garb and appearance had enabled the experienced scoundrel to guess at once what was up. Thomas turned sharp on his assailant, who was a fat, flabby-looking wretch, whose face indicated a vicious career in every line and pimple. At the moment it was lit up by an expression of elfish rage. But when in his turn the peasant seized him with a grip of iron and flung him away as if he had been a street cur barking at his heels, the man's face grew nearly pale with an expression of mingled wrath and fear. The fear kept him near the door, where he stood yelling for help, calling on "Jim" to come and turn this intruder out, volleying oaths and blasphemies, and finally beseeching the intruder not to ruin him, but taking good care all the while not to summon the police. "Jim" came at last--the "waiter" or bully of the place. He was of stronger build than his master, and at once grabbed Thomas by the collar, purposing to turn him out. But Thomas was endowed with heroic strength in that hour, and three such men would not have driven him from the place. Wrenching himself round, he took his new assailant by the throat, and dashed him back against his master with such force that they both rolled over in the narrow doorway. This feat tickled the company immensely, and they fell to clattering with pewter pots and glasses, and to shouting in derision as encouragement.