A couple of chairmen and a milk-girl were looking on grinning. "There, bed's the word now!" Hawkesworth cried, seizing him and dragging him on. "Bed's the word! I said we would make a night of it, and we have. What's more, my lad," he continued in a tone too low for Tom's ear, "if you're not so cut to-morrow, you're glad to keep the house--I'm a Dutchman!"
This time his efforts were successful. His lodging, taken a week before in the name of Plomer, was only a few doors distant. In two minutes he had got Tom thither; in three, the lad, divested of his coat, boots and neckcloth, was snoring heavily on the bed; while the Irishman, from an armchair on the hearth, kept dark watch over him. At length he too fell asleep, and slumbered as soundly as an innocent child, until a muffled hammering in the parlour roused him, and he stood up yawning and looked about him. The room, stiflingly close, lay in semi-darkness; on the bed sprawled the young runagate, dead asleep, his arms tossed wide. Hawkesworth stared awhile, still half asleep; at last, thirsting for small beer, he opened the door and went into the parlour. Here the windows were open: it was high noon. The noise the Irishman had heard was made by a man whose head and, shoulders were plunged in a tall clock that stood in one corner. The man was kneeling at his task mending something in the works of the clock. The Irishman touched him roughly with his foot.
"Sink that coffin-making!" he cried coarsely. "Do you hear? Get up!"
The clock-maker withdrew his head, looked up meekly to see who disturbed him, and--and swore. Simultaneously Hawkesworth drew back with a cry, and the two glared at one another. Then the man on the floor--he wore a paper cap, and below it his fat elderly face shone with sweat--rose quickly to his feet. "You villain!" he cried, in a voice tremulous and scarcely articulate, so great was his passion. "I have found you at last, have I? Where's my daughter?" and he stretched out his open hands, crook-fingered, and shook them in the younger man's face. "Where is my daughter?"
"Lord, man, how do I know?" Hawkesworth answered. He tried to speak lightly, but with all his impudence he was taken aback, and showed it.