Part 78

"Really!"

"----to your going along with me--I'm expected!"

"Oh! you're expected, are you! pretty soon it will be: 'Come over and see us, won't you?'"

"I trust so," said Macloud, placidly.--"But, as you're never coming back to Northumberland, it's a bit impossible."

"Oh! damn Northumberland!" said Croyden.

"I've a faint recollection of having heard that remark before."

"I dare say, it's popular there on smoky days."

"Which is the same as saying it's popular there any time."

"No, I don't mean that; Northumberland isn't half so bad as it's painted. We may make fun of it--but we like it, just the same."

"Yes, I suppose we do," said Macloud. "Though we get mighty sick of seeing every scatterbrain who sets fire to the Great White Way branded by the newspapers as a Northumberland millionaire. We've got our share of fools, but we haven't a monopoly of them, by any means."

"We had a marvelously large crop, however, running loose at one time, recently!" laughed Croyden.

"True!--and there's the reason for it, as well as the fallacy. Because half a hundred light-weights were made millionaires over night, and, top heavy, straightway went the devil's pace, doesn't imply that the entire town is mad."

"Not at all!" said Croyden. "It's no worse than any other big town--and the fellows with unsavory reputations aren't representative. They just came all in a bunch. The misfortune is, that the whole country saw the fireworks, and it hasn't forgot the lurid display."

"And isn't likely to very soon," Macloud responded, "with the whole Municipal Government rotten to the core, councilmen falling over one another in their eagerness to plead nolle contendere and escape the penitentiary, bankers in jail for bribery, or fighting extradition; and graft! graft! graft! permeating every department of the civic life--and published by the newspapers' broadcast, through the land, for all the world to read, while the people, as a body, sit supine, and meekly suffer the robbers to remain. The trouble with the Northumberlander is, that so long as he is not the immediate victim of a hold up, he is quiescent. Let him be touched direct--by burglary, by theft, by embezzlement--and the yell he lets out wakes the entire bailiwick."

"It's the same everywhere," said Croyden.

"No, it's not,--other communities have waked up--Northumberland hasn't. There is too much of the moneyed interest to be looked after; and the councilmen know it, and are out for the stuff, as brazen as the street-walker, and vastly more insistent.--I'm going in here, for some cigarettes--when I come out, we'll change the talk to something less irritating. I like Northumberland, but I despise about ninety-nine one hundredths of its inhabitants."

When he returned, Croyden was gazing after an automobile which was disappearing in a cloud of dust.

"Ever see a motor before?" he asked.

Croyden did not hear him. "The fellow driving, unless I am mightily fooled, is the same who stopped me on the street, in front of Clarendon," he said.

"That's interesting--any one with him?"

"A woman."

"A woman! You're safe!" said Macloud. "He isn't travelling around with a petticoat--at least, if he's thinking of tackling you."

"It isn't likely, I admit--but suppose he is?"

The car was rapidly vanishing in the distance. Macloud nodded toward it.

"He is leaving here as fast as the wheels will turn."

"I've got a very accurate memory for faces," said Croyden. "I couldn't well be mistaken."

"Wait and see. If it was he, and he has some new scheme, it will be declared in due time. Nothing yet from the Government?"

"No!"