Part 12

I suppose there had never been such a moment of emotion in Abraham Kellet's life as when, duly installed in the mayoral chair, wearing the mayoral robes, invested with the mayoral chain, he rose to make his first speech as chief magistrate of Sicaster. For once the pomposity of manner which had grown upon him slipped away; he seemed to revert to a simple, a more natural self. He looked round him; he glanced at his wife and daughters; he caught my eye--it was a full moment before the applause which had greeted the Mayor's rising had died away that he could command himself to speak. When he spoke his first sentences were nervous and hesitating, but he gained confidence when he began to refer to Sparcroft's references to his career as a tradesman.

"You see before you one," he said, "who never knew what it was to fear a difficulty, who refused to believe in obstacles, who always meant to march on with the times, and who----"

He paused there for a second, for he was troubled with a slight cough that morning, and in that second a voice, penetrating, cold and sharp as steel and as merciless as the implacable avenger's hand when it drives steel home, rang out across the hall--

"_And who burned his shop in order to get the insurance money!_"

I have never had a clear recollection--no, I never had a clear realization--of what followed. I remember a sea of white, frightened faces, a murmur of voices, of seeing the man behind the clock stretching an accusing finger across the space between the gallery and the platform. And I remember Abraham Kellet, palsy-stricken, gripping the table before him and staring, staring at the accusing finger and the man behind it as one might stare at the Evil Thing. It seemed hours before that second passed and a cry, more like the cry of a lost soul than of a man, burst, dryly, hoarsely, from his lips--

"_Aynesley! Come back!_"

Then in all his mayoral finery he fell heavily across the table, and the mayoral chain rattled against the mace which had been carried before many an honest predecessor for twice two hundred years.

There was no procession to church that day and no mayoral banquet that night, but Sicaster had plenty to talk of, and it is a gossip-loving town. And the shameful story was all true. The fire of many a long year before was a clever piece of incendiarism on Abraham Kellet's part, and his manager Aynesley had detected his guilt and had been squared by Abraham, who had subsequently endeavoured, to put a nice phrase on it, to have him removed. And Aynesley had sworn revenge, and had worked and schemed until he, too, was a rich man--and he had bided his time, waiting to pull Abraham from the pinnacle of his glory just as he reached it.

Vanity of vanities--all is vanity! It is time for our nightcaps.

GOOD-NIGHT.

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.