mayor's
office could now be their lounging-place and headquarters. Bat Quayle,
the leader of a strong constituency of the submerged tenth, had already
departed breathing vengeance, when he discovered that there was nothing
in the new _regime_ for the Boys. They had given their votes to Emmet
in the confident expectation of special privilege and protection; but
he had made no promises, and had none to keep. No previous Democratic
mayor of Warwick had ever been able to dispense with the Boys, and it
remained for Emmet to offset their loss by winning new supporters
during his administration. Bat Quayle, he knew, would be picked up by
his opponents and used against him two years hence; but two years
seemed a long time, and the mayor shook out the lines and started off
with a burst of speed, as if he would tumble black care into the snow
behind him.

The street was like a vista of fairyland. A new fall of snow had
covered all unsightly stains of traffic, and now lay heaped on every
inch of horizontal space, on branch and roof and post, on window-ledge
and fence. The sky was clearing, and the last belated flakes were
floating slowly downward, detached from the burdened roofs by light
puffs of wind. To one glancing upward, the feathery visitors seemed to
drop from the widening spaces of pale blue sky. The ringing sound of
snow shovels and the crisp crunching of pedestrians' feet indicated a
falling mercury. The air was filled with the jocund jingling of
sleighbells, now coming, now near at hand, now lessening into the
distance, a pleasing confusion of silvery sounds, not inharmonious in
their varying pitch and intensity.

Emmet, crouching low among his blankets, drew his cap down over his
eyes and let out another link of speed. At last he was free to take up
the problem that occupied his leisure moments. His wife had gone South
with her father on the very day when he had expected her to lift the
veil from their marriage, and an acknowledgement of the justice of her
anger caused him to keep the secret still, awaiting her decision. He
could count the times they had met during the last two years on the
fingers of his hands. This relationship, which had promised so much at
its inception, was the great mystery of his life, and every succeeding
month it became more unreal, more inexplicable. Now he went back in
his mind to the time when the bishop's daughter began to take his car
rather than another, and conveyed to