going on which we didn't hear
about, even from our fat cops, it would be investigated, all right.
What's the matter with you?"

"I'm glad now you told me about that hearing to-night," stated Farr,
ignoring the other's curiosity. "I'm glad I know when and where to
locate the mayor and his men in session. I'll find out if they propose
to waste the people's time hearing funny stories about policemen and are
going to let murder go on while they are laughing."

He strode away, cursing at his workmen as he tramped along the side of
the ditch.

Farr knocked at the garret room of Etienne early that evening.

"I want you to come with me," he commanded.

The old man obeyed without questions. As they walked along the streets
Farr did not volunteer information. He was grimly sure that if Etienne
should receive an inkling of what was expected of him the old man would
not stop running until he had crossed the Canadian border.

They were ten minutes worming their way through the press that packed
the corridors of City Hall. Groups were bulked at the doors admitting
to the aldermen's room--men thatched against each other and overlapping
like bees in a swarm at the door of a hive.

But the young man was tall and his shoulders were broad and he kept
uttering the magic words, "Room for witnesses!" In his own consciousness
he knew that what he should attempt to testify to that night was not
on the slate, but the crowd accepted him as one of those from whom they
anticipated entertainment, and allowed him to pass--and Etienne, holding
to his young friend's coat, followed close and made his way before the
throng could close in again.

The hearing began and progressed, and there was much laughter when
the delinquencies of certain fat policemen were related--it was
a free-and-easy affair--a sort of midsummer fantasy in municipal
politics--a squabble between ward bosses who had become jealous in
matters of the distribution of police patronage.

Walker Farr, standing against the wall of the audience-chamber, did
not laugh. He was busy with thoughts of his own. This bland fooling in
municipal matters while stealthy death, protected by city franchise,
dripped, so he believed, from every faucet in the tenement-house
district, stirred his bitter indignation. Etienne Provancher stood
beside him, and the old man did not laugh, either, because he did not
understand in the least what those men were talking about. And he was
very uneasy, wistfu