and
yet of it. Each month there came, via Jamaica, the three weeks' old copy
of The Weekly Times; he subscribed to Mudie's Colonial Library; and
from the States he had imported an American lawn-mower, the mechanism of
which no one as yet understood. Within his own borders he had created
a healthy, orderly seaport out of what had been a sink of fever and a
refuge for all the ne'er-do-wells and fugitive revolutionists of Central
America.

He knew, as he sat each evening on his veranda, looking across the
bay, that in the world beyond the pink and gold sunset men were still
panting, struggling, and starving; crises were rising and passing;
strikes and panics, wars and the rumors of wars, swept from continent to
continent; a plague crept through India; a filibuster with five hundred
men at his back crossed an imaginary line and stirred the world from
Cape Town to London; Emperors were crowned; the good Queen celebrated
the longest reign; and a captain of artillery imprisoned in a swampy
island in the South Atlantic caused two hemispheres to clamor for
his rescue, and lit a race war that stretched from Algiers to the
boulevards.

And yet, at the Windless Isles, all these happenings seemed to Sir
Charles like the morning's memory of a dream. For these things never
crossed the ring of the coral reefs; he saw them only as pictures in an
illustrated paper a month old. And he was pleased to find that this
was so. He was sufficient to himself, with his own responsibilities and
social duties and public works.

He was a man in authority, who said to others, "Come!" and "Go!" Under
him were commissioners, and under the commissioners district inspectors
and boards of education and of highways. For the better health of the
colony he had planted trees that sucked the malaria from the air;
for its better morals he had substituted as a Sunday amusement
cricket-matches for cock-fights; and to keep it at peace he had created
a local constabulary of native negroes, and had dressed them in the
cast-off uniforms of London policemen. His handiwork was everywhere,
and his interest was all sunk in his handiwork. The days passed gorgeous
with sunshine, the nights breathed with beauty. It was an existence
of leisurely occupation, and one that promised no change, and he was
content.

As it was Thursday, the Council met that morning, and some questions
of moment to the colony were to be brought up for consideration.
The question of the dog-tax