de a discovery later in the day. The coachman
slept over the carriage-house, and on going up the ladder to put on his
celluloid collar he perceived a hole in his ceiling and some plaster on
his bit of carpet. The window had been open all day. The alderman had
not only failed to get the keyhole, he had not only failed to get the
double-doors, he had failed to hit any part whatever of the ground
floor!

And this unsettled the alderman. This proved to the alderman that the
active use of a revolver incurred serious perils. It proved to him that
nearly anything might happen with a revolver. He might aim at a
lamp-post and hit the town hall clock; he might mark down a burglar and
destroy the wife of his affections. There were no limits to what could
occur. And so he resolved never to shoot any more. He would still carry
the revolver; but for his old English gentlemanliness he would rely less
on that than on the gout.

But the whole town (by which I mean the councillors and the leading
manufacturers and tradesmen and their sons) had now an interest in the
revolver, for Brindley, the architect, had spoken of that which he had
seen with his own eyes. Some people accepted the alderman without demur
as a great and terrible shot; but others talked about a fluke; and a
very small minority mentioned that there was such a thing as blank
cartridge. It was the monstrous slander of this minority that induced
the alderman to stand up morally for his revolver and to continue
talking about it. He suppressed the truth about the damaged ceiling; he
deliberately allowed the public to go on believing, with Brindley, that
he had aimed at the keyhole and really gone through it, and his
conscience was not at all disturbed. But that wicked traducers should
hint that he had been using blank cartridge made him furiously
indignant, and also exacerbated his gout. And he called on his cousin
Joe to prove that he had never spent a penny on blank cartridge.

It was a pity that he dragged the sardonic Joe back into the affair. Joe
observed to him that for a man in regular revolver practice he was
buying precious few cartridges; and so he had to lay in a stock. Now he
dared not employ these cartridges; and yet he wished to make a noise
with his revolver in order to convince the neighbourhood that he was in
steady practice. Nor dare he buy blank cartridges from Joe. It was not
safe to buy blank cartridges anywhere in the Five Towns, so easily does
news tr