years, he still kept along in the bland belief, based on Stewart's
assurances, that money was due him from the Morrisons. Whenever Mac Tavish
went to the safe, obeying Stewart's word, he expressed _sotto voce_ the
wish that he might be able to drop into the Hon. Calvin Dow's palm red-hot
coins from the nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish
lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to the
full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly
grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination was
exasperating!

But there was no one in sight that morning who promised the diversion or
the effrontery that would make this the day of days, and there seemed to
be no excuse that would furnish the occasion for the battle-cry which
would end all this pestiferous series of levees.

The muffled rackelty-chackle of the distant looms soothed Mac Tavish. The
nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished obbligato
for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a business man. But
those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers--it was a tin-can, cow-bell
discord in a symphony concert.

Mac Tavish, honoring the combat code of Caledonia, required presumption to
excuse attack, needed an upthrust head to justify a whack.

Patrolman Cornelius Rellihan, six feet two, was lofty enough. He marched
to and fro beyond the rail, his heavy shoes flailing down on the hardwood
floor. Every morning the bang of those boots started the old pains to
thrusting in Mac Tavish's neck. But Officer Rellihan was the mayor's
major-domo, officially, and Stewart's pet and protégé and worshiping
vassal in ordinary. An intruding elephant might be evicted; Rellihan could