The Doctor hurried down the street, with a strange malicious smile on his face. Every now and then his hand sought his breast pocket again, and hugged a check for a hundred pounds which lay there. It was his last money in the world; when that was gone, his banking account was exhausted, and nothing remained but his wife's pittance—and nothing more was coming. Yet he had devoted that sum to a purpose, and now he stopped at Alderman Johnstone's door, and asked for the master of the house, still grimly smiling at the thought of what he was preparing for Dale Bannister, if only Johnstone would help him. Johnstone had a lease now, he was independent—if only he would help him!
The Alderman listened to the plan.
"It's a new trade for me," said he, with a grin.
"I find the stock—I have it ready. And——" He held up the check.
The Alderman's eyes glistened.
"They can't touch me," he said, "and I should like to 'ave a shy at the Squire. 'Ere's my 'and upon it."
A day or two afterward Dale heard that the sale of "Sluggards" was increasing by leaps and bounds. A single house had taken five hundred copies. "Amor Patriæ" had evidently given a fresh impetus to the earlier work, in spite of the remarkable difference of tone which existed between them.
"It shows," said Dale complacently to Philip Hume, "that most people are not such intolerant idiots as that fellow Roberts."
But what it really did show will appear in due season. Dale did not know; nor did Philip, for he said, with a fine sneer:
"It shows that immorality doesn't matter if it's combined with sound political principles, old man."