ng of a
door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question.

He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction.

But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
his way out to _dejeuner_; it was the chief of the employes in the
telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked.

"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's
stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?"
The speaker gathered up courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of
news, especially of ill news.

M. de Wissant shook his head.

"Alas! there has been an accident, m'sieur le maire! A terrible
accident! One of the submarines--they don't yet know which it is--has
been struck by a big private yacht and has sunk in the fairway of the
Channel, about two miles out!"

The Mayor of Falaise uttered an involuntary exclamation of horror. "When
did it happen?" he asked quickly.

"About half an hour ago more or less. _I_ said that m'sieur le maire
ought to be informed at once of such a calamity. But I was told to wait
till the marriages were over."

Looking furtively at the mayor's pale face, the young man regretted that
he had not taken more on himself, for m'sieur le maire looked seriously
displeased.

There was an old feud between the municipal and the naval authorities of
Falaise--there often is in a naval port--and the mayor ought certainly
to have been among the very first to hear the news of the disaster.

The bearer of ill news hoped m'sieur le maire would not blame him for
the delay, or cause the fact to postpone his advancement to a higher
grade--that advancement which is the perpetual dream of every French
Government official.

"The admiral has only just driven by," he observed insinuatingly, "not
five minutes ago----"

But still Jacques de Wissant did not move. He was listening to the
increasing stir and tumult going on outside in the market place. The
sounds had acquired a sinister significance; he knew now that the
tramping of feet, the loud murmur of voices, meant that the whole
population belonging to the seafaring portion of the town was emptying
itself out and