How'd you go with him Mate?

Closing time. The crowd is dispersing onto the street.
One fellow, Ron Moore, speaks loudly to another, Witt Complete, bluntly & coarsely putting it that he, Ron, has had intimate experiences with Witt's girlfriend.

Witt has some illegal drug in his system that is reacting badly to alcohol. This gives him a hair trigger & a firm belief in his own invincibility. It wouldn't have mattered what Ron said to him, "hello" would have been sufficient to trigger a violent reaction.

Witt has to be restrained by the guards. Ron is some distance away, talking to a friend & now that he goaded someone for sport, has no further interest in the matter.

A female approaches Witt, urging him to calm down & come home. She is the lady whose repute has been called into question and promises Witt a "good time" if he comes straight home without making any trouble. Hearing this exchange, Ron looks around, takes one look at her & announces that he has made a mistake, that it is someone else's girlfriend that he has been seeing on the sly.

Of course Witt is not soothed one bit by this, the drugs and a sense of outrage tell him to attack Ron. He starts with some verbal abuse. While the guards continue to restrain him this is his only weapon

The name calling & threats continue for a few minutes, eventually the guards release Witt. By this time Ron is sick of the insults, struts over to Witt, cleans him up in a brief flurry of blows, then decks him. It the starkest mismatch Mine Host has seen for quite some time.

Ron then casually departs the scene, disappearing around the corner with a friend. Witt demands to be allowed to go after him. The guards restrain him, but soon tire of saving him from himself.

Mine Host takes the view that Witt is of the age of majority, that the Wayside Tavern is not responsible for the drugs Witt has taken, and besides we are all sick of him by this point. So the guards leave him alone.

Witt beelines for the corner where Ron went.

Mine Host strolls to the other end of the block, in time to see Ron strolling along with his friend, neither with a care in the world.

A glance back along the street shows a crumpled form in the shadows on the footpath. Witt's friends are standing over him, trying to urge him back to consciousness so they don't have to carry him home.

So continues life behind the bar.