, and wealth and correctness. He was
ever with the strong against the weak, unless the weak happened to be an
ancient institution, in which case he would support it with all the
valour of his convictions. Needless to say, he was a very active
politician. Perhaps the activity of his politics had something to do
with the frequency of his transformations--for he would always be his
somewhat spectacular self; he would always call his soul his own, and he
would quietly accept a snub from no man.

And now he was a tram-conductor. Things had come to that.

In the old days of the steam trams, where there were only about a score
of tram-conductors and eight miles of line in all the Five Towns, the
profession of tram-conductor had still some individuality in it, and a
conductor was something more than a number. But since the British
Electric Traction Company had invaded the Five Towns, and formed a
subsidiary local company, and constructed dozens of miles of new line,
and electrified everything, and raised prices, and abolished season
tickets, and quickened services, and built hundreds of cars and engaged
hundreds of conductors--since then a tram-conductor had been naught but
an unhuman automaton in a vast machine-like organization. And passengers
no longer had their favourite conductors.

Gossips did not precisely see Thomas Chadwick as an unhuman automaton
for the punching of tickets and the ringing of bells and the ejaculation
of street names. He was never meant by nature to be part of a system.
Gossips hoped for the best. That Chadwick, at his age and with his
girth, had been able, in his extremity, to obtain a conductorship was
proof that he could bring influences to bear in high quarters. Moreover,
he was made conductor of one of two cars that ran on a little branch
line between Bursley and Moorthorne, so that to the village of
Moorthorne he was still somebody, and the chances were just one to two
that persons who travelled by car from or to Moorthorne did so under the
majestic wing of Thomas Chadwick. His manner of starting a car was
unique and stupendous. He might have been signalling "full speed ahead"
from the bridge of an Atlantic liner.

II

Chadwick's hours aboard his Atlantic liner were so long as to interfere
seriously, not only with his leisure, but with his political activities.
And this irked him the more for the reason that at that period local
politics in the Five Towns were extremely agitated and int