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124 diplomacy as a cannon-ball, and his fellow members had to sit on him twice a minute to keep him from spoiling everything. Judge Toodles knew a heap of law but was sure to get tangled in its intricacies, and when he tried to unravel himself was nearly as lucid and logical as a straw in a cocktail. Teekey was an unknown quantity. He owned a fine cottage built on public property, and although he had originally been an "innocent purchaser" his doubtful title so worried him that he was accustomed to obtain from Wilder and Easton a new deed about once a year, and each deed he filed gave him a little more public land. He was reputed a wealthy and eminently respectable gentleman, and the chances of his fighting on the side of the cottagers and jeopardizing his own property to assert the principles of right and justice were considered good—but not gilt-edged.

With this ill-assorted material Jar-