nce of town and
people. Reform was not going to be carried out in a day in that
time-worn borough, nor were its ancient customs, rotten and corrupt as
they were, to be uprooted by newspaper articles. So far, Simon Crood and
his gang had won all along the line, and Brent realized that most men in
his position would have given up the contest and retired from the field
in weariness and disgust. But he was not going to give up, nor to
retire. He had a feeling, amounting to something near akin to a
superstition, that it was his sacred duty to carry on his dead cousin's
work, especially as Wallingford, by leaving him all his money, had
provided him with the means of doing it. There in Hathelsborough he was,
and in Hathelsborough he would stick, holding on like a bulldog to the
enemy.

"I'm not counted out!" he said that evening, talking the proceedings of
the day over with Queenie. "I'm up again and ready for the next round.
Here I am, and here I stop! But new tactics! Permeation! that's the
ticket. Reckon I'll nitrate and percolate the waters of pure truth into
these people in such a fashion that they'll come to see that what that
old uncle of yours and his precious satellites have been giving 'em was
nothing but a very muddy mixture. Permeation! that's the game in
future."

Queenie scarcely knew what he meant. But she gathered a sense of it from
the set of his square jaw and the flash of his grey eyes; being
increasingly in love with him, it was incomprehensible to her that
anybody could beat Brent at any game he took a hand in.

"The inquiry was all cut-and-dried business," remarked Queenie.
"Arranged! Of course the accounts and things would be cooked. Uncle
Simon and Mallett and Coppinger would see to that. They'll have an extra
bottle to-night over this victory. And if they could only hear to-morrow
that you're going to clear out their joy would be full."

"Well, I'm not!" declared Brent. "Instead of clearing out, I'm going to
dig in. I guess they'll find me entrenched harder than ever before long.
We'll get on at that to-morrow, now that this all-hollow inquiry's
over."

Queenie understood him perfectly that time. He and she were furnishing
the house which Brent had purchased in order to get a properly legal
footing in Hathelsborough. It was serious and occasionally deeply
fascinating work, necessitating much searching of the shops wherein
antique furniture was stored, much consultation with upholsterers and
deco