st advantage, which seemed quite reasonable, since he
was familiar with the situation. Therefore the disposition of the money
was left to him. Do not, however, oh high-minded and honorable reader,
be too ready to suppose that this was the end of the five thousand
dollars, so far as the Rookeries are concerned. Politicians of the
O'Farrell type may not be meticulous on points of finance. But they are
quite likely to be human. Tip O'Farrell had seen recently more misery
than even his toughened sensibilities could uncomplainingly endure. Some
of the fund may have gone into the disburser's pocket. A much greater
portion of it, I am prepared to affirm, was distributed in those
intimate and effective forms of beneficence which, skillfully enough
managed, almost lose the taint of charity. O'Farrell was tactful and he
knew his people. Many cases over which organized philanthropy would have
blundered sorely, were handled with a discretion little short of
inspired. Much wretchedness was relieved; much suffering and perhaps
some lives saved.

The main issue, nevertheless, was untouched. The epidemic continued to
spread beneath the surface of silence. O'Farrell wasn't interested in
that side of it. He didn't even know what was the matter. What money he
expended on that phase of the difficulty was laid out in perfecting his
system of guards, so that unauthorized doctors couldn't get in, or
unauthorized news leak out. Also he continued to carry on an irregular
but costly traffic in dead bodies. Meantime, the Special Committee of
the Old Home Week Organization, thus comfortably relieved of
responsibility and the appropriation, could now devote itself
single-mindedly to worrying over the "Clarion."

According to Elias M. Pierce, no mean judge of men, there was nothing to
worry about in that direction. That snake, he considered, was scotched.
It might take time for said snake, who was a young snake with a head
full of poison (his uncomplimentary metaphor referred, I need hardly
state, to Mr. Harrington Surtaine), to come to his serpentine senses;
but in the end he must realize that he was caught. The committee wasn't
so smugly satisfied. Time was going on and there was no word, one way or
the other, from the "Clarion" office.

Inside that office more was stirring than the head of it knew about. On
a warmish day, McGuire Ellis, seated at his open window, had permitted
the bland air of early June to lull him to a nap, which was rudely