alers was half seas over,
and noted also that his brother, who made no hypocritical pretensions
to extra temperance virtues, was dignified and sober. This eloquent fact
could not be unfruitful at the end of a hot political canvass. At the
mass-meeting Angelo tried to make his great temperance oration, but was
so discommoded--by hiccoughs and thickness of tongue that he had to give
it up; then drowsiness overtook him and his head drooped against Luigi's
and he went to sleep. Luigi apologized for him, and was going on to
improve his opportunity with an appeal for a moderation of what he
called "the prevailing teetotal madness," but persons in the audience
began to howl and throw things at him, and then the meeting rose in
wrath and chased him home.

This episode was a crusher for Angelo in another way. It destroyed his
chances with Rowena. Those chances had been growing, right along, for
two months. Rowena had partly confessed that she loved him, but wanted
time to consider. Now the tender dream was ended, and she told him so
the moment he was sober enough to understand. She said she would never
marry a man who drank.

"But I don't drink," he pleaded.

"That is nothing to the point," she said, coldly, "you get drunk, and
that is worse."

[There was a long and sufficiently idiotic discussion here, which ended
as reported in a previous note.]

CHAPTER X. SO THEY HANGED LUIGI

Dawson's Landing had a week of repose, after the election, and it needed
it, for the frantic and variegated nightmare which had tormented it all
through the preceding week had left it limp, haggard, and exhausted at
the end. It got the week of repose because Angelo had the legs, and
was in too subdued a condition to want to go out and mingle with an
irritated community that had come to distrust and detest him because
there was such a lack of harmony between his morals, which were
confessedly excellent, and his methods of illustrating them, which
were distinctly damnable. The new city officers were sworn in on the
following Monday--at least all but Luigi. There was a complication in
his case. His election was conceded, but he could not sit in the board
of aldermen without his brother, and his brother could not sit there
because he was not a member. There seemed to be no way out of the
difficulty but to carry the matter into the courts, so this was resolved
upon.

The case was set for the Monday fortnight. In due course the time
arrived.