get that clear in your mind, because our family never owned
him after he came home from the French war prisons and took up with his
drinking habits; and that comes into the story, too.

As it happens, the occasion that took their quarrel into the Law Courts
is one of the first things I can remember. It was in the year
'twenty-five. Landlord Cummins, by dint of marrying a woman with means
(that was my aunt), and walking the paths of repute for eleven years
with his funny-shaped calves, got himself elected Mayor of the Borough.
You may suppose it was a proud day for him. In those times the borough
used to pay the mayor a hundred pounds a year to keep up appearances,
and my mother had persuaded my father to hire a window for Election Day
opposite the Town Hall, so that she might have the satisfaction of
seeing so near a relative in his robes of dignity.

Well, there in the window we were gathered on that July forenoon (for
the mayors in those back-a-long days weren't chosen in November as they
are now), and the sun--it was a bright day--slanting high down our side
of the street, and my mother holding me tight as we leaned out, for I
was just rising five, and extraordinary heavy in the head. And out upon
the steps of the Town Hall stepped Landlord Cummins, Mayor, with the
town crier and maces before him, and his robes hanging handsomely
about his calves, and his beaver hat and all the rest of the
paraphernalia, prepared to march to church.

While he stood there, bowing to a score of people, and looking as big as
bull's beef, who should step out from the pavement under us but Uncle
Billy Bosistow! He was a ragged old scarecrow, turned a bit grey and
lean with iniquitous living, but not more than half-drunk; and he
stepped into the middle of the roadway and cut a low reverence to his
worship, flinging out his leg like a dancing-master. And says he, in a
high cackle, very solemn but mocking:

"I salute thee, O Mayor! Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before
thy God."

"Put that dam fool in the stocks!" cried his worship, very red in the
gills, and speaking vicious. And Uncle Billy was collared and marched
off between two constables, while the procession formed up to lead the
new Mayor to church.

Well, that, as it happened, wasn't a lucky start-off for Mr. Cummins's
year of office. For no sooner was Billy let out of the stocks than off
he went to Lawyer Mennear, who was a young man then just set up in
pr