votes for the barber, esteeming it as a choice and
perennial joke, and his reading his name among the unsuccessful
candidates served to foster his delusion and keep Flynn's ambition
alive.

One Sunday, shortly after the Carrolls had moved to Banbridge, John
Flynn was shaving Jacob Rosenstein, who kept the principal dry-goods
store of the village, and a number of men were sitting and lounging
about, waiting their turns. Flynn's shop was on the main street in
the centre of the business district--his shop, or his "Tonsorial
Parlor," as his sign had it. It was quite an ornate establishment.
There was a lace lambrequin in the show-window, a palm in each
corner, between which stood a tank of gold-fish, and below the lace
lambrequin swung a gilt cage containing an incessantly hopping,
though silent, yellow canary.

Flynn was intensely proud and fond of the establishment, and was
insulted if it was alluded to as a barber-shop. He himself never even
thought of it, much less spoke of it, as such. "Well, I must be going
to the 'Parlor,'" he would say when setting out to business. He was
unmarried, and lived in a boarding-house.

As Flynn shaved Rosenstein, who was naturally speechless, his
landlady's husband, Billy Amidon, was talking a good deal. Amidon was
always shaved for nothing, in consideration of the fact that his wife
supported him with board money, and the barber had an undefined
conviction that it was mean to take it back after he had just paid
it. Amidon was a notorious talker, and was called a very "dry sort of
man," which, in the village vernacular, signified that he was
esteemed a wit.

"Well," he said to another man, who was leaning with a relaxation of
all his muscles against the little strip of counter, which contained
a modest assortment of hair-oils and shaving-brushes and soaps which
nobody was ever seen to buy--"well, John has lost ten pounds since
the election, Tappan."

Tappan ran a milk-route between Banbridge and Ardmoor, a little
farming-place six miles out. Tappan was an Ardmoor man. His
milk-wagon stood in front of the "Tonsorial Parlor." He had a drink
of beer at Frank Steinbach's saloon next door, and now was waiting
for his Sunday shave before going home. His milk-peddling was over
for the day. He was a hard-working-man, and had been on the road
since four o'clock. He had a heavy look about his eyes, and he
greeted Amidon's facetiousness with a weary and surly hitch.

"Has he?" he replied,