ss. They want to throw the slops out of the top windows into the
street; they want their cesspools at the front door; they think that
everybody's got to have smallpox some time or another, and the sooner
they have it the better; they want to be bribed; and they think that if
a vote's worth having it's worth paying for--and yet there's a bridge
between these two towns! A bridge--why, they're as far apart as the
Yukon and Patagonia."

"What'd buy Felix Marchand?" Ingolby asked meditatively. "What's his
price?"

Jowett shifted with impatience. "Say, Chief, I don't know what you're
thinking about. Do you think you could make a deal with Felix Marchand?
Not much. You've got the cinch on him. You could send him to quod, and
I'd send him there as quick as lightning. I'd hang him, if I could, for
what he done to Lil Sarnia. Years ago when he was a boy he offered me
a gold watch for a mare I had. The watch looked as right as could
be--solid fourteen-carat, he said it was. He got my horse, and I got his
watch. It wasn't any more gold than he was. It was filled--just plated
with nine-carat gold. It was worth about ten dollars."

"What was the mare worth?" asked Ingolby, his mouth twisting again with
quizzical meaning.

"That mare--she was all right."

"Yes, but what was the matter with her?"

"Oh, a spavin--she was all right when she got wound up--go like Dexter
or Maud S."

"But if you were buying her what would you have paid for her, Jowett?
Come now, man to man, as they say. How much did you pay for her?"

"About what she was worth, Chief, within a dollar or two."

"And what was she worth?"

"What I paid for her-ten dollars."

Then the two men looked at each other full in the eyes, and Jowett threw
back his head and laughed outright--laughed loud and hard. "Well, you
got me, Chief, right under the guard," he observed.

Ingolby did not laugh outright, but there was a bubble of humour in his
eyes. "What happened to the watch?" he asked.

"I got rid of it."

"In a horse-trade?"

"No, I got a town lot with it."

"In Lebanon?"

"Well, sort of in Lebanon's back-yard."

"What's the lot worth now?"

"About two thousand dollars!"

"Was it your first town lot?"

"The first lot of Mother Earth I ever owned."

"Then you got a vote on it?"

"Yes, my first vote."

"And the vote let you be a town-councillor?"

"It and my good looks."

"Indirectly, therefore, you are a landowner, a citizen, a public
servant