eningly.

"Yes, Judge." Mr. Brown essayed a placating smile. "Yes, indeed,
Judge Pike."

"Has your employer, the manager of this hotel, seen that snow?" pursued
the personage, with a gesture of unspeakable solemn menace.

"Yes, sir. I think so. Yes, sir."

"Do you think he fully understands that I am the proprietor of this
building?"

"Certainly, Judge, cer--"

"You will inform him that I do not intend to be discommoded by his
negligence as I pass to my offices. Tell him from me that unless he
keeps the sidewalks in front of this hotel clear of snow I will cancel
his lease. Their present condition is outrageous. Do you understand
me? Outrageous! Do you hear?"

"Yes, Judge, I do so," answered the clerk, hoarse with respect. "I'll
see to it this minute, Judge Pike."

"You had better." The personage turned himself about and began a grim
progress towards the door by which he had entered, his eyes fixing
themselves angrily upon the conclave at the windows.

Colonel Flitcroft essayed a smile, a faltering one.

"Fine weather, Judge Pike," he said, hopefully.

There was no response of any kind; the undershot jaw became more
intolerant. The personage made his opinion of the group
disconcertingly plain, and the old boys understood that he knew them
for a worthless lot of senile loafers, as great a nuisance in his
building as was the snow without; and much too evident was his unspoken
threat to see that the manager cleared them out of there before long.

He nodded curtly to the only man of substance among them, Jonas Tabor,
and shut the door behind him with majestic insult. He was Canaan's
millionaire.

He was one of those dynamic creatures who leave the haunting impression
of their wills behind them, like the tails of Bo-Peep's sheep, like the
evil dead men have done; he left his intolerant image in the ether for
a long time after he had gone, to confront and confound the aged men
and hold them in deferential and humiliated silence. Each of them was
mysteriously lowered in his own estimation, and knew that he had been
made to seem futile and foolish in the eyes of his fellows. They were
all conscious, too, that the clerk had been acutely receptive of Judge
Pike's reading of them; that he was reviving from his own squelchedness
through the later snubbing of the colonel; also that he might further
seek to recover his poise by an attack on them for cluttering up the
office.

Naturally, Jonas Tabor was