ssumed that the people of Trigger Island
had any desire or inclination to be funny about it. On the contrary,
they took it very seriously, and quite naturally so, if one stops to
consider the narrow confines by which their very existence was bounded.
There were no such things as "trifles" in the daily life of Trigger
Island. The smallest incident took on the importance of an event, the
slightest departure from the ordinary at once became significant. In
other circumstances, these people would have been vastly amused by the
quixotic settlement of the affairs of Joe and Matilda; they would have
grinned over the extraordinary decree of Justice Malone, and they would
have taken it all with an indulgent wink. As a matter of fact, they
were stern-faced and intense. They had made laws of their own, they had
established a code. The violation of either was not to be countenanced.
It was of no consequence to them that Judge Malone's methods were
without precedent, that they were not even a travesty in the true light
of the law.

No one was more soberly in earnest than Michael Malone himself. The
proceedings were carried out with the utmost dignity and formality.
There were no smiles, no jocose comments.

Nothing will serve more clearly to illustrate the sense of isolation to
which the people of Trigger Island had resigned themselves than the fact
that they accepted the Judge's decision and the subsequent marriage
as absolutely unassailable, either from a legal or an ethical point of
view.

The town itself was flourishing. Traffic and commerce were carried on
in the most systematic, organized manner. Everybody was busy. The utter
impossibility for one man or set of men to profit at the expense of
others naturally put a curb upon ambitions, but it did not subdue the
spirit of enterprise.

There is a baby in the Governor's Mansion,--a lusty boy with blue eyes
and an engaging smile. He is four months old, and his name is already a
household word on Trigger Island. It is not Algernon, nor is it Adonis.
It is John;--John Clinton Percival.

The Governor's Mansion is a pretentious structure. It has four rooms and
a bath! A wide porch extends along the full front of the house, with a
steeply pitched awning protecting it from the rain and sun. At one end
of the porch is a very cosy arrangement of hand-wrought chairs and
a commodious swinging seat. The other end, just off the parental
bed-chamber, has been converted into an out-door s