-and most appropriate, I am sure. But I
see the City Marshal is waiting for us to head the procession. Shall we
lead the way?"

The band struck up the March of the Priests from _Athalie_, and Horace,
his head in a whirl, walked with his host, followed by the City Lands
Committee, the Sheriffs, and other dignitaries, through the Art Gallery
and into the Great Hall, where their entrance was heralded by a flourish
of trumpets.

The Hall was crowded, and Ventimore found himself the object of a
popular demonstration which would have filled him with joy and pride if
he could only have felt that he had done anything whatever to justify
it, for it was ridiculous to suppose that he had rendered himself a
public benefactor by restoring a convicted Jinnee to freedom and society
generally.

His only consolation was that the English are a race not given to
effusiveness without very good reason, and that before the ceremony was
over he would be enabled to gather what were the particular services
which had excited such unbounded enthusiasm.

Meanwhile he stood there on the crimson-draped and flower-bedecked dais,
bowing repeatedly, and trusting that he did not look so forlornly
foolish as he felt. A long shaft of sunlight struck down between the
Gothic rafters, and dappled the brown stone walls with patches of gold;
the electric lights in the big hooped chandeliers showed pale and feeble
against the subdued glow of the stained glass; the air was heavy with
the scent of flowers and essences. Then there was a rustle of
expectation in the audience, and a pause, in which it seemed to Horace
that everybody on the dais was almost as nervous and at a loss what to
do next as he was himself. He wished with all his soul that they would
hurry the ceremony through, anyhow, and let him go.

At length the proceedings began by a sort of solemn affectation of
having merely met there for the ordinary business of the day, which to
Horace just then seemed childish in the extreme; it was resolved that
"items 1 to 4 on the agenda need not be discussed," which brought them
to item 5.

Item 5 was a resolution, read by the Town Clerk, that "the freedom of
the City should be presented to Horace Ventimore, Esq., Citizen and
Candlestick-maker" (which last Horace was not aware of being, but
supposed vaguely that it had been somehow managed while he was at the
buffet in the Library), "in recognition of his services"--the resolution
ran, and Horace listene