rled up into little arabesques under his eyes, which were closing
with fatigue. Only he did not wish to sleep. In the perfect stillness he
could hear his own rapid heartbeat. The clatter of sleety rain against
the windows made him restless.

If only O'Brien were here, O'Brien, who was a good chief of police, and
a matchless personal aide-de-camp. They would then put on boots and
oilskins and go out into the night on one of their frequent
Harun-Al-Rashid expeditions. The mayor's wife? Yes, it is true that
before leaving for the theatre she had cautioned him not to stir from
the house. But she could not possibly have known how great was his need
of a breath of air. But O'Brien was not here. Was it because he had just
been appointed president of the Board of Education and comptroller in
one and was a busy man? Perhaps. And yet a person might step to the
telephone and ring up O'Brien if it were not that one's legs were
weighted down with the weight of centuries and of dozens of new school
buildings all in reinforced concrete. Was it concrete? The mayor was not
quite sure, and he turned to ask O'Brien, who stood there at one side of
the fireplace, erect and attentive.

"Do we go out to-night?" said the mayor.

"I should not advise it, your Honour," answered O'Brien. "You are not
well enough. If it is adventure you would go in search of, I have here
quite an extraordinary delegation of citizens who desire an interview
with your Honour."

"Let us hear them, by all means," replied the mayor.

O'Brien drew aside the curtain which divided the library from the
general reception room and there marched in, two abreast and maintaining
precise step, a solemn line of children, who saluted the mayor gravely
and ranged themselves in a semicircle across the room. As the mayor
veered in his chair to face his visitors, a girl of some fifteen years
stepped out of the line. She was still in her schoolgirl's dresses, but
tall, with features of a fine, pensive cut and earnest eyes that were
already peering from out the child's life into the opening doors of
womanhood.

"May it please your Honour," she began, "we are a committee from the
Central Bureau of Federated Children's Organisations and we have come
here to protest against certain intolerable conditions of which our
members are the victims."

Had they come in behalf of those additional three million dollars, the
mayor wondered uneasily. "State the nature of your grievance," he sai