'"

But the Council were determined that he should no longer be heard. When
he asked again:

"May I read this document?" the Mayor replied:

"I do not think it is in order."

"I intend to read it," cried Denis.

"I rule you out of order," answered the Mayor.

Denis began to read slowly and deliberately, but the opposing
councillors prevented him with a babel of cries. The meeting finally
broke up in great disorder, after Denis had attempted to make himself
heard and had been escorted from the Council Chambers by the Town Clerk.

The following day he began his battle with Grey Town, a fight in which
all fair-minded and right-thinking men conceded him a victory. He
published the full account of the proceedings in the Goldenvale Court,
ending in a triumphant acquittal, and the subsequent apology in "The
Investigator." He also published the document purporting to be signed by
George Haynes. It was an acknowledgment of the loan of a sum of money,
equivalent to that which Haynes had paid for the land under offer to the
Council, and a promise to repay the money at an exorbitant rate of
interest to Garnett. Very few impartial men doubted the real meaning of
the transaction.

But Garnett knew Grey Town. It was not a particularly moral town, but
there were periods when it arose in virtuous indignation to punish the
evil-doer, and it generally selected as its victim the man who was the
least guilty. Denis Quirk was made the object of one of these outbursts
of public morality. He was a man of dissolute morals, divorced under
peculiar circumstances. Denis Quirk must be booted out of Grey Town.

The Quirks were at breakfast on the day that followed the scene in the
Council Chambers; only Denis was absent. Samuel Quirk was reading "The
Mercury" when his son's name caught his eye.

"What is this about Denis?" he cried; but as he read he wished he had
not spoken, for he loved and respected his wife, notwithstanding his
professed scorn for her.

"And what is it?" she asked.

"Never you mind. Denis can fight for himself," he answered.

"Just read it to me," she urged.

"What for would a woman be wanting to hear such things?" he answered,
and thrust the paper in his pocket as he went out.

But Mrs. Quirk was determined to know. She had noted the frown on her
husband's face, and gathered from it that he was reading ill news.

"Just slip out, Honey, and ask Joe for his copy. I must know the worst,"
she said to Kathleen.