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Teased to the top of his bent by what he had evoked in his dangerous gesture of damming up the sluices of his feelings by the machinery of reason, Bloody Johnny had recourse now to the grand human panacea for all mental aggravations. He did what he ought to have done at once, before he started worrying his mind about his speech at all; he allowed his chin to sink down upon his burly chest and subsided into a deep and dreamless sleep. Down upon the bowed head of Geard of Glastonoury fell Philip's electric light. Over his head the Stone Witch stared at her morgue of petrified indecencies. Beneath his feet rolled the swift, silent, metal-gleaming current of that water of Lethe. Noon came upon those Somersetshire spring-meadows above his sleeping-place, with their cuckoo flowers and marsh marigolds, and gave place to an afternoon of rain-threatening cloud-racks that gathered heavily upon the western horizon. But still Mr. Geard slept. Several times he changed his position without awakening, and at last his head and his shoulders actually did down to the stalagmite base of the Stone Witch, and instinctive^ sought there a smooth concavity against which to lie at rest.

The long cloudy afternoon of April Fool's day ebbed slowly away. Those cloud-racks, gathering above the distant Welsh mountains, grew more and more ominous. Long swaying arms, outstretched hooked fingers, hooded shoulders, nodding plumes, far-streaming tattered banners, huge-tilted swords and monstrous axes, towered there over the Western Channel and neither advanced nor dispersed! In this portentous hovering and lingering they resembled those spirits of the departed in the ancient British Isles, of which Plutarch makes mention, quoting from the travel ler Demetrius: “Demetrius further said, that of the islands around Britain many were uninhabited. ... He went to the island which lay nearest to those uninhabited and found it occupied by few inhabitants . . . who were, however, sacrosant and inviolable in the eyes of the Britons. Soon after his arrival a great disturbance of the atmosphere took place, accompanied by many portents, by the winds bursting forth into hurricanes and by fiery bolts falling. When it was over, the islanders said that some one of the mighty had passed away . . . moreover there is there, they said, an island in which Cronos is imprisoned, with Briareus keeping guard over him as he sleeps, for, as they put it, sleep is the bond forged for Cronos. They add that around him are many deities, his henchmen and attendants.”

And when that threatened and menaced day drew to a close at last, if Will Zoyland before turning ofi the electric light had decided to take a stroll down these passages and had got as far as the edge of the subterranean water he would have been astonished to see a second figure, “couchant, in-bend. sable,” lying beside that stalagmitish sorceress.

There was quite a large audience collected together that night to hear the first public speech of the new Mayor. The Abbot's Tribunal did not offer very extensive accommodation nor a verv liberal number of seats for those who did get in. but, as the entertainment was given gratis, the late-comers to the meeting had no cause for grievance if they found themselves somewhat uncomfortably crowded.

The only representative from The Elms wTas the redoubtable Emma Sly who came, in a very literal sense, to “spy out the land,” for it may well be believed what a shrewd account, and a more succinct one than any other Glastonbury hand-maid could have given, the mistress of The Elms looked forward to receiving while she ordered Philip's dinner on the following day.

Miss Drew, too, refrained from attending “tins silly speechifying”; but the Misses Rogers came from the Abbey House just as Penny Pitches, escorted by Isaac Weatherwax, came from the Vicarage.

Both the Dekkers were there, as were also Dr. Fell and his formidable sister, Miss Bibby.

Old Lawyer Beere turned up, rather to John Crow's surprise, bringing with him his daughter Angela, who'had never looked paler, colder, more unapproachable, and more completely bored than she looked as she took her seat between her father and Mr. Stilly, the cashier of the bank.

Miss Elizabeth Crow arrived in very good time, escorted, in true old-fashioned style, by her plump maid, Tossie Stickles, who, once in the hall, separated herself from her mistress and became all eyes to get a glimpse of her gentleman-admirer, the nympholeptish Mr. Barter. In this hope, however, the girl was disappointed, for Barter was not present.

Megan Geard was in the front of the hall, taciturn and indifferent, wearing a velvet gown cut and flounced according to the fashion of at least a decade ago, and treating the whole occasion with a withdrawn disdain more worthy of the house of Rhys than of the position of Mayoress. Crummie, in a dress of bewitching simplicity, was turning her beautiful chin all the time to steal hurried and furtive glimpses of Sam Dekker, whose own attention ^as focussed upon the entrance-door, for he was at once hoping and dreading that Zoyland might have taken it into his impulsive head to bring Nell into town for this one occasion!

Among the humbler members of the crowd there were present Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Cole, Sally Jones and her brother Jackie. Jenny Morgan, the once lovely Glastonbury charwoman, had come too, bringing Number One's little friend "Morgan Nelly'' with her, but from the manner in which this woman's large tragic eyes kept closing and her sad underlip kept drooping and her shoulder kept leaning against the wall by one of the windows, it looked as if the Mayor's speech would have to be very lively indeed to keep her from falling asleep.

The old cronies, Number One and Number Two, were seated, in anticipatory bliss, side by side. Red Robinson sat at the back of the room, in what he felt to be the precise strategic position for the art of heckling, but he never once looked at Crummie. If he looked at any girl at all, all that evening, it was at the Geard servant, Sally, but even these glances were quickly exhausted. Red's head was so full of politics that he had scant energy left to include love.

Mr. Evans and Cordelia sat at the edge of one of the aisles in the centre of the room. Mr. Evans seemed to be as much withdrawn into his thoughts as Mrs. Geard was withdrawn into the pride of her South Wales blood, for it was only once or twice that he glanced at the platform, although he was seated so near it.

John and Mary, the former arrayed—as the insignia of a Master of Ceremonies—in a neat dinner-jacket, borrowed for the occasion from Tom Barter but which was at once much too short and much too loose for him, were seated in the front row, which was occupied, otherwise, by old Mr. and Mrs. Stilly, the parents of the cashier, by the Reverend Dr. Sodbury, the Rector of St. Benignus, and by Mr. Wollop, the ex-Mayor. It cannot be said that Mr. Wollop looked quite as happy seated in the front row of his rival's audience as he looked in his cage, but he looked, all the same, about twice as happy as anyone else in the Tribunal.

Dave Spear and Persephone sat just behind the ex-Mayor; and it gradually Became a cause of much suppressed giggling and tittering at the back of the room to notice the manner in which the worthy obese man kept twisting his head round to talk to the beautiful Percy, whose brown boy-curls and white shoulders— for though Dave was in plain ordinary clothes. Percy, for soin^ caprice of her own, appeared in evening dress—seemed of great interest to him.

Towards the roofs of Glastonbury, towards the Gothic roof of the Abbot's Tribunal, advanced that black cloud-rack from the western sea, but although every now and then there was a deep, rolling peal of thunder, not one single drop of rain fell. These heavy jagged clouds, this first of April night, were like the evil clouds spoken of in the Scriptures, for they were “clouds without water.”

But the big church-clock in St. John's Tower struck eight, which was the hour of the meeting, and there was no sign of the Mayor, nor of any move to supply his place if he did not come. There were three Aldermen in the little waiting-room at the back of the platform, and these worthy men were now beginning to perspire with perturbation. On the empty platform were five empty chairs, one for the Mayor, one for old Mr. Bishop, the Town Clerk, and the others for these anxious and nervous officials who were now growing distressingly conscious of their boots and trousers and socks and were continually retiring to the little lavatory in the rear of their room. There were quite a number of young people at the back of the hall, some seated, some standing, some moving restlessly about, and every now and then there would arise from this turbulent element various cries and laughter and even clappings and hissings, as this or that crude jest was bandied about in connection with the absence of the Mayor.

St. John's clock now chimed the news laconically and briefly that it was a quarter past eight. The unruly element in that tightly packed little hall began to grow seriously troublesome. The jokes grew grosser and broader. “Mayor be drunk!” cried one. “Better send they Aldermen to look for he in Michael's Inn!” cried another. “Mayor be making April Fools of us poor dogs, now 'ee be so rich and so set up!” growled a third. “Mayor be enjoyin isself wi' wold Mother Legge in Paradise!” declared one lad, bolder than the rest. “Shush! Shush!” cried several voices. *

Meanwhile Abel Twig and his crony Bart Jones were whispering together in high excitement. 'Them Posters said ?lwas for Glast'n “ee were holdin' meetin'. Seems to I 'twere for to see how much foolin' Glast”n folk could stand, afore us cast he down, back where he were afore us lifted he up.“ Thus spoke Old Jones in the ear of his friend, but Number One was kinder in his interpretation. ”Maybe Mayor have been taken wi' the dizzies, like what woming do suffer from, when 'tis near their time. 'Tis a hard thing for even a Preacher like he to stand up afore such a proud assembling!"

Penny Pitches who had taken her seat without shame by the side of Mr. Weatherwax now addressed a personal appeal to that potentate. “Twould be a moment for thee to strike up wi' one o5 thee pretty songs, Isaac,” she declared stoutly. “Thik Bloody Johnny baint the only one what can lift up voice.”

“Chut, chut, woman!” murmured the gardener reproachfully. “This be a time for Authority to speak. The man / be wantin5 to hear from, be Mr. Philip Crow. He'd be the gent to send all these gabbling geese to the right-about.”

A long rolling thunder-clap responded to the gardener's words from those slowly gathering clouds above the Tribunal- “Hark to't!” cried Penny Pitches, “he'll have to come quick or he'll be drenched to the skin!”

The sympathetic Sally Jones, seriously concerned about the fate of her master, murmured anxiously in Jackie's ear: “I can't keep me eyes from Missuses' back, I can't She must be shiverin' and shakin' inside, poor dear! 'Tis turble 'sponsive to be sittin5 up so straight and Master not here.”

“You don't think, Sal, do 'ee,” wThispered the excited Jackie, “that the thunder have hit 'im in the eyeball like it used to hit they bad girt men in Bible?”

St. John's deep-voiced clock now chimed the half hour and its sound died away in the midst of a thickj deep, reverberating peal of sullen thunder.

“Why isn't there any lightning, FatKer?” said Angela Beere to Lawyer Beere. “I haven't seen one single flash all the evening.”

The girl let her eyes rest, as she spoke, upon the beautiful nape of Persephone's neck. Those brown boyish curls were beginning to touch a vein of perilous susceptibility in that reserved nature.

It is, in fact, at moments of this kind, when a company of fellow-townspeople are gathered in close proximity, with nothing to do but to stare at one another, that all sorts of unexpected relationships leap up into being.

“We needn't have hurried through our dinner after all. it seems,” was her father's characteristic reply to this question about the lightning.

“Not a drop of rain, Sam,”' said the Vicar of Glastonbury to his son.

“I'm glad of it,” murmured Sam, thinking to himself that his Nell might, even yet, be on her way to the Tribunal.

It was at that moment that old Mr. Sheperd, the Glastonbury policeman, moved up to the back of the Town Clerk's chair. “Hadn't 'ee better begin, Sir?” he said earnestly. “Maybe his Worship ain't coming, and these young rogues will be getting out of hand soon.”

The Town Clerk nodded wearily, got up with difficulty from his creaking chair, for he was past eighty, and made his way down the hall. He paused for a minute by the side of John Crow, with whom he held a brief consultation, watched with intense curiosity by everybody in the place. Then he entered the room at the back of the platform. Here he found the three Aldermen, who advanced to greet him in trepidation and consternation. “Come on, gentlemen,” he said, in the tone of an aged warrior, who has weathered crises far worse than this trifling one in the course of his long life. “On to the stage w^ith ye! I'll open the meeting and call on the Mayor's secretary.” Herding the three nervous magnates in front -of him, like three reluctant and sulky bullocks, the gallant Mr. Bishop scrambled up the platform steps after them and took his seat in the Mayor's chair.

The four men were greeted with uproarious applause, and the clapping and shouting continued for at least three solid minutes. “Three cheers for Mr. Bishop!” shouted one young scaramouch who had perched himself upon the high sill of one of the great mullioned windows. The Town Clerk rose to his feet and advanced to the square table in the centre of the platform. Here he raised his hand for silence. The general relief at the presence of someone was so great that he was responded to by an impressive and startling hush.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Bishop began, “we have come here to listen to our distinguished fellow-citizen, the newly elected Mayor of Glastonbury, Mr. John Geard.”

“'Ear, 'ear!” came the magnanimous and comfortable voice of Mr. Wollop from his place in the front row.

“But since,” Mr. Bishop went on, “the inclement weather, or some other cause at present unknown, has prevented our much-regretted Mayor from being present at this meeting which he himself called together, it behoves me, as his humble official subordinate, to call upon his secretary, my young friend, Mr. John Crow, to tell us, or read to us, if possible, in the Mayor's own words, a resoomy”—this was the only long word in the Town Clerk's repertoire of public speaking that he pronounced incorrectly—“a resoomy of our distinguished friend's inspiring ideas with regard to the future of our beloved town. I therefore call upon Mr. Crow to------”