suddenly very nervous and they drop the bartender, insisting that “It wasn’t intentional.” Everyone in the bar seems anxious, too, and nearby patrons move to a far side of the room. The red-gloved man says nothing; he only walks up to the dead bartender and begins to saw off his hand at the wrist. The girl hides her face against Ren’s sleeve. The man finishes sawing through the bone and points to the girl, demanding a bowl of stew. She rushes to the kitchen, leaving Ren to try and forget the “back-and-forth motion of the knife” making its way through the bartender’s wrist. He begins to feel like he is peering into the well at Saint Anthony’s, listening to the echo of the water—and in that echo Ren remembers a familiar “terror...almost touching it” as the patrons of the bar “mumbled in his ear.” The girl saves him from spilling Benjamin’s drink, which is beginning to tip over in his hand.

He returns to Tom’s table, where Benjamin and Tom are staring at the red-gloved man as he eats stew with the bartender’s hand. Tom insists that they must leave immediately, but Benjamin is not ready to leave yet. Tom, pouring himself another drink, explains that the “mousetrap man,” Mr. McGinty, runs a business for “smuggled things” in O’Sullivan’s bar and takes a “cut” of every sale. When he does not receive his money, “his men do some cutting of their own.” Tom, making a “gesture of apology toward Ren,” says that he does not want to lose his hands. Benjamin does not reply; instead, he stares intently at the red-gloved man eating with the bartender’s hand “as if this act was teaching him something important, something he’d been trying to learn for years.” He looks angrier every time the man raises the bartender’s hand to his mouth to eat a spoonful of stew. Ren has never seen Benjamin look so furious. Finally, Benjamin declares that they will do one final “run” before leaving North Umbrage, telling Ren to “beg [his] way back with Mrs. Sands” before disappearing into the crowd.

Tom pours two drinks and slides one over to Ren, saying that he is “tired of drinking alone.” Though Ren does not want to leave Dolly alone any longer, he takes a drink. Tom begins reminiscing about his friend Christian again, repeating that it is “a shame to lose your fellows.” Ren tries to choke down more whiskey until a “warm, pleasant glow started up the back of his throat.” He asks Tom if Benjamin is his “fellow.” Tom, who is beginning to slur his words, explains that he met “Benji” while he was running away from the army. Benjamin was only slightly older than Ren, and he was sold to the army in order to pay for his uncle’s gambling debt. He was sent out west, where he saw “men shot to pieces, trying to put their stomachs back inside themselves.” Tom took him in, fed him, and showed him how to play cards and “how to be sure a woman wasn’t making a food out of him.”  Now, his and Benjamin’s “paths are so twisted together that they’ll hang us from the same rope.” Ren thinks about Sebastian's whispering that he should have made a wish on the wishing stone the moment he found it. Tom seems to fall asleep, but before Ren can leave the table, stops him and tells him that Brom and Ichy have “nice names” and that Ren should “hold on to them.”

Analysis

The unsettling events in O’Sullivan’s bar offer several suggestions about the novel’s major mysteries. The man with the redgloves and the hat with the blood-red band is undoubtedly one of the “hat boys” that Dolly spoke of—not only because he actually wears a hat, but also because his “pushed in” face seems to allude to Dolly’s earlier claim that he kicked in the faces of the hat boys who tried to murder him. Furthermore, by Tom’s account, the man with the red gloves is likely one of Mr. McGinty’s enforcers. The return of the red color motif in the man's gloves and hat band signals that he is a dangerous man. It is especially important, however, not only that this man saws off the dead bartender’s hand but also that Ren responds as though he were remembering what happened to him. The plot seems to focus in on Ren’s history and the true story behind his missing hand.

O’Sullivan’s bar foreshadows imminent hardship. It is not only grim and dark but also curiously dangerous—as one of the undertakers revealed when remarking that bartenders do not “last too long in this place.” While possible that Mr. McGinty’s illegal business is to blame, it is uncertain what causes the repeated death. All of the unsolved conflict builds upon existing tension that carries the story forward. Given the brutality of the man with the red gloves and Dolly’s already-established murderous tendencies, more violence is expected. Moreover, Benjamin, who was averse to visiting North Umbrage, appears increasingly outraged at the man with the red gloves and decides to embark on a final “run” before fleeing town.