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 this community? With the people strong for him as they had grown in the last two years to be. Why, the fools! The idiots! They would get themselves laughed out of the court of public opinion in an hour.

But Thorpe was in again bursting with that information which Scanlon's coming had damned up in his throat. "Say, chief; there's an awful row up about that McKenzie's Tongue bill," he reported excitedly. "The very devil's broke loose. The merchants of all three towns are getting up on their hind legs about it, and the chamber of commerce has called a mass meeting for two o'clock in the opera house."

Harrington still smiled, but more grimly. "Beat me to the opera house, eh?"

"Yes; and Madden and Clayton are going to be there to tell them all about it."

"I'll make monkeys of 'em," boasted Harrington; with one of his fighting grins: "They'll be lucky if they don't get themselves tarred and feathered for putting Socatullo County in a disgraceful position like that before the State. Anything else, Thorpe?"

"No, no!" stammered the Sergeant, staring as if a little confused at his chief's enormous display of self-confidence. "Except that Mr. Moody just phoned that he would like an appointment with you at 12:15."

Henry glanced at the brass clock on the mantel. It was 12:05 now. "It will suit me better if Moody can come in right away," he told his chief clerk shortly.

Moody, Assistant Secretary of Boland General and a sort of financial factotum of Boland personally, was presently announced and came in, sleek, sandy, slightly bald, a man of medium height and medium weight, a medium man all over.