n anyway, needed
brushing; he wore cotton gloves, too big for him. He carried a mass of
papers and books under one arm; the other hand grasped an umbrella which
had grown green and grey in service. He might have been all sorts of
insignificant things: a clerk, going homeward from his work; a
tax-gatherer, carrying his documents; a rent-collector, anxious about a
defaulting tenant--anything of that sort. But Bunning knew him for Mr.
Councillor John Wallingford, at that time Mayor of Hathelsborough. He
knew something else too--that Wallingford, in spite of his careless
attire and very ordinary appearance, was a remarkable man. He was not a
native of the old town; although he was, for twelve months at any rate,
its first magistrate, and consequently the most important person in the
place, Hathelsborough folk still ranked him as a stranger, for he had
only been amongst them for some twelve years. But during that time he
had made his mark in the town--coming there as managing clerk to a firm
of solicitors, he had ultimately succeeded to the practice which he had
formerly managed for its two elderly partners, now retired. At an early
period of his Hathelsborough career he had taken keen and deep interest
in the municipal affairs of his adopted town and had succeeded in
getting a seat on the Council, where he had quickly made his influence
felt. And in the previous November he had been elected--by a majority of
one vote--to the Mayoralty and had so become the four hundred and
eighty-first burgess of the ancient borough to wear the furred mantle
and gold chain which symbolized his dignity. He looked very different in
these grandeurs to what he did in his everyday attire, but whether in
the Mayoral robes or in his carelessly worn clothes any close observer
would have seen that Wallingford was a sharp, shrewd man with all his
wits about him--a close-seeing, concentrated man, likely to go through,
no matter what obstacles rose in his path, with anything that he took in
hand.

Bunning was becoming accustomed to these evening visits of the Mayor to
the Moot Hall. Of late, Wallingford had come there often, going upstairs
to the Mayor's Parlour and remaining there alone until ten or eleven
o'clock. Always he brought books and papers with him; always, as he
entered, he gave the custodian the same command--no one was to disturb
him, on any pretext whatever. But on this occasion, Bunning heard a
different order.

"Oh, Bunning," said th