whipped forth to die--for what? For the pleasure of a
few aristocrats. Who was it dragged your husbands and sons away from
your arms, leaving you to starve? The governor of Lorient. Who is he?
An aristocrat, paid to scourge your husbands and children to
battle--paid, perhaps, by Prussia to betray them, too!"

A low murmur rose from the people. Buckhurst swept the throng with
colorless eyes.

"Under the commune we will have peace. Why? Because there can be no
hunger, no distress, no homeless ones where the wealth of all is
distributed equally. We will have no wars, because there will be
nothing to fight for. We will have no aristocrats where all must labor
for the common good; where all land is equally divided; where love,
equality, and brotherhood are the only laws--"

"Where's the mayor?" I whispered to Eyre.

"In his house; Speed is with him."

"Come on, then," I said, pushing my way around the outskirts of the
crowd to the mayor's house.

The door was shut and the blinds drawn, but a knock brought Speed to
the door, revolver in hand.

"Oh," he said, grimly, "it's time you arrived. Come in."

The mayor was lying in his arm-chair, frightened, sulky, obstinate,
his fat form swathed in a red sash.

"O-ho!" I said, sharply, "so you already wear the colors of the
revolution, do you?"

"Dame, they tied it over my waistcoat," he said, "and there are no
gendarmes to help me arrest them--"

"Never mind that just now," I interrupted; "what I want to know is
why you wrote the governor of Lorient to expel our circus."

"That's my own affair," he snapped; "besides, who said I wrote?"

"Idiot," I said, "somebody paid you to do it. Who was it?"

The mayor, hunched up in his chair, shut his mouth obstinately.

"Somebody paid you," I repeated; "you would never have complained of
us unless somebody paid you, because our circus is bringing money into
your village. Come, my friend, that was easy to guess. Now let me
guess again that Buckhurst paid you to complain of us."

The mayor looked slyly at me out of the corner of his mottled eyes,
but he remained mute.

"Very well," said I; "when the troops from Lorient hear of this
revolution in Paradise, they'll come and chase these communards into
the sea. And after that they'll stand you up against a convenient wall
and give you thirty seconds for absolution--"

"Stop!" burst out the mayor, struggling to his feet. "What am I to
do? This gentleman, Monsieur Buckhurst, w