ping
sound, and went rattling up the street towards the country. Everything
seemed pervaded with an atmosphere of expectancy, a tense air of
unrest, as though the whole place were holding itself in readiness for
a summons.

And then it came: the great consummation of the day's work. From the
tower of the fire-hall burst forth the loud peal of the town bell. Six
o'clock! Like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty the town leaped into
life. The whistles of the saw-mills down by the lake broke into
shrieks of joy. The big steam pipe of Thornton's foundry responded
with a delighted roar. The flour mill, the wheel-factory and the
tannery joined in a chorus of yells. From factory and shop, office and
store, came pouring forth the relieved workers, laughing and calling
across the street to each other above the din. There was a noisy
tramp, tramp of feet, a hurrying this way and that, a confusion of
happy voices. And over all the clamour, the big bell in the tower
continued to fling out far over the town and the lake and the woods the
joyous refrain that the day's work was done, was done, was done.

Near the corner of Main Street, on a leafy thoroughfare that ran up
into the region of lawns and gardens, stood a neat row of red-brick
office buildings, with wide doors and shiny windows. Over the widest
door and on the shiniest window, in letters of gold, was the legend:
EDWARD BRIANS, Barrister, etc.

Never a man passed this door on his homeward way without saluting it.

"Hello, Ed! Coming home?"--"Hurrah, Ed! Will you be along if we wait
ten minutes?"--"Ed! Hurry up and come along!"

No one appeared in response to the summons; but from within came
refusals, roared out in a thunderous voice, each roar growing more
exasperated than the last.

The streets were almost deserted when, at last, the owner of the big
voice came to his door. He was a man of about thirty-five; of middle
height, straight, strong and alert. His fair hair had a tendency
towards red, and also towards standing on end, and his bright blue eyes
had a tendency to blaze suddenly in wrath or shut up altogether in
consuming laughter. He had practised law in Algonquin for ten years,
and as he had been brought up in the town and was related to one-half
the population, and loved by the whole of it, he was spoken of
familiarly as Lawyer Ed.

A tall man, leading a little boy by the hand, followed him slowly down
the steps. The man was not past middl