One day as I entered I noted that the police had caused to be hung up in the bar a full description of Billy the Bagman, and this placard gave me an opportunity of making the murder the subject of conversation before I had been there very long. The bar was crowded with people who might have been described as the scum of the earth. There was not a person there who did not seem to have the mint-mark of villainy plainly branded on his or her face, for both sexes were represented. They were human beings, it was true, and yet they did not seem to be leading human lives. But still they could not be likened to animals, because animals do not pour vile poisons down their throats, and do not make one’s blood curdle with blasphemous oaths and ribald utterances. No, it would be more apt to describe t
