ing to do for
us? We've put that man up tremendious high; d'ye think he's going to kick
away the ladder?"

He half grumbled to himself, half asked his neighbor Dick. They were both
a little drunk, and very surly.

"I dunno. But he's vastly high and mighty--that I know; and,
by ----, I'll tell him so!" said Dick, energetically clasping his
hands, bringing one of them down upon the bench on which he sat,
and clenching every word with an oath.

"Hallo, Jim! let's make him give us somethin' to drink!"

The two constituents approached the representative whose election they
had so ardently supported.

"Well, Newt, how air ye?"

Abel Newt was confounded at being accosted in such a place at such an
hour. He raised his heavy eyes as he leaned unsteadily against the
counter, and saw two beetle-browed, square-faced, disagreeable-looking
men looking at him with half-drunken, sullen insolence.

"Hallo, Newt! how air ye?" repeated Jim, as he confronted the
representative.

Abel looked at him with shaking head, indignant and scornful.

"Who the devil are you?" he asked, at length, blurring the words as he
spoke, and endeavoring to express supreme contempt.

"We're the men that made yer!" retorted Dick, in a shrill, tipsy voice.

The liquor-seller, who was leaning upon his counter, was instantly
alarmed. He knew the signs of impending danger. He hurried round, and
said,

"Come, come; I'm going to shut up! Time to go home; time to go home!"

The three men at the counter did not move. As they stood facing each
other the brute fury kindled more and more fiercely in each one of them.

"We're Jim and Dick, and Ned's asleep yonder on the bench; and we're come
to drink a glass with yer, Honorable Abel Newt!" said Dick, in a sneering
tone. "It's we what did your business for ye. What yer going to do for
us?"

There was a menacing air in his eye as he glanced at Abel, who felt
himself quiver with impotent, blind rage.

"I dun--dun--no ye!" he said, with maudlin dignity.

The men pressed nearer.

"Time to go home! Time to go home!" quavered the liquor-seller; and Ned
opened his eyes, and slowly raised his huge frame from the bench.

"What's the row?" asked he of his comrades.

"The Honorable Abel Newt's the row," said Jim, pointing at him.

There was something peculiarly irritating to Abel in the pointing finger.
Holding by the counter, he raised his hand and struck at it.

Ned rolled his body off the bench in a momen