and
upon that the board rested. Burridge was furious. By one fell stroke he
was put in second place, a man who had to await the return of
Palmer--and that in his own church, so to speak.

"Why," he told some one, "the rest of us are nothing. This man is a
king."

From that time on differences of opinion within the church and elsewhere
were common. Although no personal animosity was ever admitted, local
issues almost invariably found these two men opposed to each other.
There was the question of whether the village should be made into a
borough--a most trivial matter; another, that of creating public works
for the manufacture of gas and distribution of water; a third, that of
naming a State representative. Naturally, while these things might be to
the advantage of Palmer or not, they were of no great import to
Burridge, but yet he managed to see in them an attempt or attempts to
saddle a large public debt upon widows and orphans, those who could not
afford or did not need these things, and he proceeded to so express
himself at various public meetings. Slowly the breach widened. Burridge
became little more than a malcontent in many people's eyes. He was a
"knocker," a man who wanted to hold the community back.

Although defeated in many instances he won in others, and this did not
help matters any. At this point, among other things the decay of the
fishing industry helped to fix definitely the position of the two men as
that of victor and vanquished. Whaling died out, then mackerel and cod
were caught only at farther and farther distances from the town, and
finally three- and even two-masted schooners ceased entirely to buy their
outfits here, and Burridge was left dependent upon local patronage or
smaller harbor trade for his support. Coextensively, he had the
dissatisfaction of seeing Palmer's industries grow until eventually
three hundred and fifty men were upon his payrolls and even his foremen
and superintendents were considered influential townspeople. Palmer's
son and two daughters grew up and married, branched out and became
owners of industries which had formerly belonged to men who had traded
with Burridge. He saw his grocery trade dwindle and sink, while with age
his religiosity grew, and he began to be little more than a petty
disputant, one constantly arguing as to whether the interpretation of
the Bible as handed down from the pulpit of what he now considered _his_
recalcitrant church was sound or not. W