ediately above the platform table hung a large brass lamp which
could be lowered by a chain that ran along the ceiling and down the
adjoining wall. Around the main walls and between the windows were
smaller lamps in wire brackets, which burned with a steady, yellow
light, and occasionally gave off a thin trickle of smoke that filled
the room with the sharp odor of soot. On the platform sat Clark and
Filmer on either side of the table, and on the table stood an enormous
jug of water and one glass.

At five minutes past eight the hall was crowded. Manson was there,
sitting in the front row, and leaning forward on his heavy oak stick
which seemed a very bludgeon of authority. Beside him sat his wife,
small, slight and gentle, the very antithesis of her dark and
formidable husband. Manson's eyes roved from Filmer to Clark and back
again to Filmer, but the two looked over his head and seemed no whit
disconcerted. A little further back were the Dibbotts, the former
turning his big gray-coated body, and every now and then surveying the
growing audience with his small blue eyes, while his lips pushed in and
out, which was in Dibbott a certain sign that he was thinking hard.
Mrs. Dibbott, tall, slim, and square shouldered, turned her kindly
capable face toward Clark, and felt the first intimation of that keen
interest he always roused, especially in the women who met him. He
seemed so alert, such a free agent and, it must be confessed, so
disgracefully independent of the gentler sex. Then there was Belding,
the young engineer who had had charge of the town's work at the canal.
It was not Belding's fault that the money ran out, but he had ceased
operations with an unshakable sense of personal blame that, of late,
worked poisonously in his brain. There were also the Bowers, and Mrs.
Bowers' ample and genial person was full of a pleasurable glow, for if
the mayor's plan went through they would have at last a roof over the
front porch on which she spent so many hospitable summer evenings.
Bowers himself already saw in Clark a possible and important client,
and his brain was full of half formulated propositions.

At seven minutes past eight the mayor began to speak. He had been
somewhat at a loss just how he might introduce Clark, for, as a matter
of fact, the only information he had about the visitor was what the
visitor himself had volunteered. But here, as always, Clark's
tremendous personality had expressed itself. F