"I rule you out of order," answered the Mayor.
Denis began to read slowly and deliberately, but the opposing councillors prevented him with a babel of cries. The meeting finally broke up in great disorder, after Denis had attempted to make himself heard and had been escorted from the Council Chambers by the Town Clerk.
The following day he began his battle with Grey Town, a fight in which all fair-minded and right-thinking men conceded him a victory. He published the full account of the proceedings in the Goldenvale Court, ending in a triumphant acquittal, and the subsequent apology in "The Investigator." He also published the document purporting to be signed by George Haynes. It was an acknowledgment of the loan of a sum of money, equivalent to that which Haynes had paid for the land under offer to the Council, and a promise to repay the money at an exorbitant rate of interest to Garnett. Very few impartial men doubted the real meaning of the transaction.
But Garnett knew Grey Town. It was not a particularly moral town, but there were periods when it arose in virtuous indignation to punish the evil-doer, and it generally selected as its victim the man who was the least guilty. Denis Quirk was made the object of one of these outbursts of public morality. He was a man of dissolute morals, divorced under peculiar circumstances. Denis Quirk must be booted out of Grey Town.
The Quirks were at breakfast on the day that followed the scene in the Council Chambers; only Denis was absent. Samuel Quirk was reading "The Mercury" when his son's name caught his eye.
"What is this about Denis?" he cried; but as he read he wished he had not spoken, for he loved and respected his wife, notwithstanding his professed scorn for her.
"And what is it?" she asked.
"Never you mind. Denis can fight for himself," he answered.
"Just read it to me," she urged.
"What for would a woman be wanting to hear such things?" he answered, and thrust the paper in his pocket as he went out.