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152 And now the District Council came into his purview; men elected by the people, yet thinking only of their own amour propre, of their own axes to grind, never giving a thought to the comfort and health of those they would thrust back into dwellings none too good when they were built two or three centuries ago.

"Here am I, a gilded popinjay, as I have been called, cudgelling my brains for the betterment of Stiles and his like; and yet I am baffled by the elected of Demos, just as if the District Council carried out the popular idea of the House of Lords." He laughed. "This is a funny world!" he cried aloud, forgetting he was walking High Street.

"Do you think so?" said a rasping voice that awoke him from his reverie.

He looked up. On the steps before an office stood a man with the most forbidding face he had ever seen. It was a strong, harsh countenance, seamed in deep lines by discontent, envy, anger, truculence, and also some lines drawn by the shrunken fingers of anxiety and fear ; yet no lack of courage under it all, even bravado, so Stranleigh summed him up.

On the white, opaque glass of the office before which he stood were painted in black letters the words: "Jacob Sneerly, Solicitor," and then in smaller letters at the corner, "Commissioner for Oaths." The name brought to his mind the advice