l incorporation papers by that time.
The members of the Consolidated are singing swan songs in seven
simultaneous keys at this very moment."

Bobby's description of the condition of the Consolidated was scarcely
exaggerated. It was a trying and a hopeless period for them. The bond
issue had failed miserably. It had not needed the _Chronicle_ to
remind the public of what a shaky proposition the Consolidated was,
for Bobby had thoroughly exposed the corporation during the
_Bulletin's_ campaign against Sam Stone. Bond-floating companies from
other cities were brought in, and after an examination of the books
threw up their hands in horror at the crudest muddle they had ever
found in any investigation of municipal affairs.

On the night of the council meeting, Sharpe and Trimmer and Williams,
representing the Consolidated, were compelled to come before the
council and confess their inability to take up the bonds required to
renew their franchise; but they begged that this clause, since it was
an entirely unnecessary one and was not enjoined upon gas or electric
companies in other cities, be not enforced. Council, however, was
obdurate, and the committee thereupon begged for a further extension
of time in which to raise the necessary amount of money. Council still
was obdurate, and by that obduracy the franchise of the Consumers'
Electric Company, said franchise being controlled by the Consolidated
Illuminating and Power Company, became null and void.

Thereupon Bobby Burnit, President De Graff and Dan Elliston,
representing the New Brightlight Electric Company, recently organized
for three million dollars, came forward and prayed for a franchise for
the electric lighting of the entire city, agreeing to take over the
poles and wiring of the Consolidated at a fair valuation; and council
was not at all obdurate, which was scarcely strange when one reflected
that every member of that municipal body had been selected and put in
place through the direct instrumentality of Bobby Burnit. It was
practical politics, true enough, but Bobby had no qualms whatever
about it.

"It may be quite true that I have not been actuated by any highly
noble motives in this," he confessed to a hot charge by Williams, "but
so long as in municipal affairs I am not actuated by any ignoble
motives I am doing pretty fairly in this town."

There was just the bare trace of brutality in Bobby as he said this,
and he suddenly recognized it in himself w