On this crowded twenty-four-hour cross-section of contemporary American life the curtain goes up at nine-thirty o'clock of a January forenoon.

Locality, the city of Marion—the capital of a state.

Time, that politically throbbing, project-crowded, anxious, and expectant season of plot and counterplot—the birth of a legislative session.

Disclosed, the office of St. Ronan's Mill of the city of Marion.

From the days of old Angus, who came over from Scotland and established a woolen mill and handed it down to David, who placed it confidently in the possession of his son Stewart, the unalterable rule was that "The Morrison" entered the factory at seven o'clock in the morning and could not be called from the mill to the office on any pretext whatsoever till he came of his own accord at ten o'clock in the forenoon.

In the reign of David the old John Robinson wagon circus paraded the streets of Marion early on a forenoon and the elephant made a break in a panic and ran into the mill office of the Morrisons through the big door, and Paymaster Andrew Mac Tavish rapped the elephant on the trunk with a penstock and, only partially awakened from abstraction in figures, stated that "Master Morrison willna see callers till he cooms frae the mill at ten."

To go into details about the Morrison manners and methods and doggedness in attending to the matter in hand, whatever it might be, would not limn Stewart Morrison in any clearer light than to state that old Andrew, at seventy-two, was obeying Stewart's orders as to the ten-o'clock rule and was just as consistently a Cerberus as he had been in the case of Angus and David. He was a bit more set in his impassivity—at least to all appearances—because chronic arthritis had made his neck permanently stiff.

It may be added that Stewart Morrison was thirty-odd, a bachelor, dwelt with his widowed mother in the Morrison mansion, was mayor of the city of Marion, though he did not want to be mayor, and was chairman of the State Water Storage Commission because he particularly wanted to be the chairman; he was, by reason of that office, in a position where he could rap the knuckles of those who should attempt to grab and selfishly exploit "The People's White Coal," as he called water-power. These latter appertaining qualifications were interesting enough, but his undeviating observance of the mill rule of the Morrisons of St. Ronan's served more effectively to point the matter of his character. Stewart Morrison when he was in the mill was in it from top to bottom, from carder to spinner and weaver, from wool-sorter to cloth-hall inspector, to make sure that the manufacturing principles for which All-Wool Morrison stood were carried out to the last detail.

On that January morning, as usual, he was in the mill with his sleeves rolled up.

On his high stool in the office was Andrew Mac Tavish, his head framed in the wicket of his desk, and the style of his beard gave him the look of a Scotch terrier in the door of a kennel.

The office was near the street, a low building of brick, having one big room; a narrow, covered passage connected the room with the mill. A rail divided the office into two small parts.

According to his custom in the past few months, Mac Tavish, when he dipped his pen, stabbed pointed glances beyond the rail and curled his lips and made his whiskers bristle and continually looked as if he were going to bark; he kept his mouth shut, however.

But his silence was more baleful than any sounds he could have uttered; it was a sort of ominous, canine silence, covering a hankering to get in a good bite if the opportunity was ever offered.

It was the rabble o' the morning—the crowd waiting to see His Honor the Mayor—on the other side of the rail. It was the sacrilegious invasion of a business office in the hours sacred to business. It was like that every morning. It was just as well that the taciturn Mac Tavish considered that his general principle of cautious reserve applied to this situation as it did to matters of business in general, otherwise the explosion through that wicket some morning would have blown out the windows. Mac Tavish did not understand politics. He did not approve of politics. Government was all right, of course. But the game of running it, as the politicians played the game! Bah!

He had taken it upon himself to tell the politicians of the city that Stewart Morrison would never accept the office of mayor. Mac Tavish had frothed at the mouth as he rolled his r's and had threshed the air with his fist in frantic protest. Stewart Morrison was away off in the mountains, hunting caribou on the only real vacation he had taken in half a dozen years—and the city of Marion took advantage of a good man, so Mac Tavish asserted, to shove him into the job of mayor; and a brass band was at the station to meet the mayor and the howling mob lugged him into City Hall just as he was, mackinaw jacket, jack-boots, woolen Tam, rifle and all—and Mac Tavish hoped the master would wing a few of 'em just to show his disapprobation. In fact, it was allowed by the judicious observers that the new mayor did display symptoms of desiring to pump lead into the cheering assemblage instead of being willing to deliver a speech of acceptance.

He did not drop, as his manner indicated, all his resentment for some weeks—and then Mac Tavish picked up the resentment and loyally carried it for the master, in the way of outward malevolence and inner seething. The regular joke in Marion was built around the statement that if anybody wanted to get next to a hot Scotch in these prohibition times, step into the St. Ronan's mill office any morning about nine-thirty.

Up to date Mac Tavish had not thrown any paper-weights through the wicket, though he had been collecting ammunition in that line against the day when nothing else could express his emotions. It was in his mind that the occasion would come when Stewart Morrison finally reached the limit of endurance and, with the Highland chieftain's battle-cry of the old clan, started in to clear the office, throwing his resignation after the gang o' them! Mac Tavish would throw the paper-weights. He wondered every day if that would be the day, and the encouraging expectation helped him to endure.

Among those present was a young fellow with his chaps tied up; there was a sniveling old woman who patted the young man's shoulder and evoked protesting growls. There were shifty-eyed men who wanted to make a touch—Mac Tavish knew the breed. There was a fat, wheezy, pig-farm keeper who had a swill contract with the city and came in every other day with a grunt of fresh complaint. There were the usual new faces, but Mac Tavish understood perfectly well that they were there to bother a mayor, not to help the woolen-goods business. There was old Hon. Calvin Dow, a pensioner of David Morrison, now passed on to the considerately befriending Stewart, and Mac Tavish was deeply disgusted with a man who was so impractical in his business affairs that, though he had been financially busted for ten years, he still kept along in the bland belief, based on Stewart's assurances, that money was due him from the Morrisons. Whenever Mac Tavish went to the safe, obeying Stewart's word, he expressed sotto voce the wish that he might be able to drop into the Hon. Calvin Dow's palm red-hot coins from the nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to the full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination was exasperating!

But there was no one in sight that morning who promised the diversion or the effrontery that would make this the day of days, and there seemed to be no excuse that would furnish the occasion for the battle-cry which would end all this pestiferous series of levees.

The muffled rackelty-chackle of the distant looms soothed Mac Tavish. The nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished obbligato for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a business man. But those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers—it was a tin-can, cow-bell discord in a symphony concert.

Mac Tavish, honoring the combat code of Caledonia, required presumption to excuse attack, needed an upthrust head to justify a whack.

Patrolman Cornelius Rellihan, six feet two, was lofty enough. He marched to and fro beyond the rail, his heavy shoes flailing down on the hardwood floor. Every morning the bang of those boots started the old pains to thrusting in Mac Tavish's neck. But Officer Rellihan was the mayor's major-domo, officially, and Stewart's pet and protÉgÉ and worshiping vassal in ordinary. An intruding elephant might be evicted; Rellihan could not even receive the tap of a single word of remonstrance.

It promised only another day like the others, with nothing that hinted at a climacteric which would make the affairs of the mill office of the Morrisons either better or worse.

Then Col. Crockett Shaw marched in, wearing a plug-hat to mark the occasion as especial and official, but taking no chances on the dangers of that unwonted regalia in frosty January; he had ear-tabs close clamped to the sides of his head.

Mac Tavish took heart. He hated a plug-hat. He disliked Col. Crockett Shaw, for Shaw was a man who employed politics as a business. Colonel Shaw was carrying his shoulders well back and seemed to be taller than usual, his new air of pomposity making him a head thrust above the horde. Colonel Shaw offensively banged the door behind himself. Mac Tavish removed a package of time-sheets that covered a pile of paper-weights. Colonel Shaw came stamping across the room, clapping his gloved hands together, as if he were as cold under the frosty eyes of Mac Tavish as he had been in the nip of the January chill outdoors.

"Mayor Morrison! Call him at once!" he commanded, at the wicket.

Mac Tavish closed his hand over one of the paper-weights. He opened his mouth.

But Colonel Shaw was ahead of him with speech! "This is the time when that fool mill-rule goes bump!" The colonel's triumphant tone hinted that he had been waiting for a time like this. His entrance and his voice of authority took all the attention of the other waiters off their own affairs. "Call out Mayor Morrison."

"Haud yer havers, ye keckling loon! Whaur's yer een for the tickit gillie?" The old paymaster jabbed indignant thumb over his shoulder to indicate the big clock on the wall.

"I can't hear what you say on account of these ear-pads, and it doesn't make any difference what you say, Andy! This is the day when all rules are off." He was fully conscious that he had the ears of all those in the room. He braced back. With an air of a functionary calling on the multitude to make way for royalty he declaimed, "Call His Honor Mayor Morrison at once to this room for a conference with the Honorable Jodrey Wadsworth Corson, United States Senator. I am here to announce that Senator Corson is on the way."

Mac Tavish narrowed his eyes; he whittled his tone to a fine point to correspond, and the general effect was like impaling a puffball on a rat-tail file. "If ye hae coom sunstruck on a January day, ye'd best stick a sopped sponge in the laft o' yer tar-pail bonnet. Sit ye doon and speir the hands o' the clock for to tell when the Morrison cooms frae the mill."

The colonel banged the flat of his hand on the ledge outside the wicket.
"It isn't an elephant this time, Mac Tavish. It's a United States Senator.
Act on my orders, or into the mill I go, myself!"

The old man slid down from the stool, a paperweight in each hand. "Only o'er my dead body will ye tell him in yer mortal flesh. Make the start to enter the mill, and it's my thocht that ye'll tell him by speeritual knocks or by tipping a table through a meejum!"

"Lay off that jabber, old bucks, the two of ye!" commanded Officer Rellihan, swinging across the room. "I'm here to kape th' place straight and dacint!"

"I hae the say. I'll gie off the orders," remonstrated Mac Tavish; there was grim satisfaction in the twist of his mouth; it seemed as if the day of days had arrived.

"On that side your bar ye may boss the wool business. But this is the mayor's side and the colonel is saying he's here to see His Honor. Colonel, ye'll take your seat and wait your turn!" He cupped his big hand under the emissary's elbow.

Mac Tavish and Rellihan, by virtue of jobs and natures, were foes, but their team-work in behalf of the interests of the Morrison was comprehensively perfect.

"What's the matter with your brains, Rellihan?" demanded the colonel, hotly.

"I don't kape stirring 'em up to ask 'em, seeing that they're resting aisy," returned the policeman, smiling placidly. "And there's nothing the matter with my muscle, is there?" He gently but firmly pushed the colonel down into a chair.

"Don't you realize what it means to have a United States Senator come to a formal conference?"

"No! I never had one call on me."

"Rellihan, Morrison will fire you off the force if it happens that a
United States Senator has to wait in this office."

The officer pulled off his helmet and plucked a card from the sweatband. "It says here, 'Kape 'em in order, be firm but pleasant, tell 'em to wait in turn, and'—for meself—'to do no more talking than necessary.' If there's to be a new rule to fit the case of Senators, the same will prob'bly be handed to me as soon as Senators are common on the calling-list." He put up a hand in front of the colonel's face—a broad and compelling hand. "Now I'm going along on the old orders and the clock tells ye that ye have a scant twinty minutes to wait. And if I do any more talking, of the kind that ain't necessary, I'll break a rule. Be aisy, Colonel Shaw!" He resumed his noisy promenade.

Mac Tavish was back on the stool and he clashed glances with Colonel Shaw with alacrity.

"There'll be an upheaval in this office, Mac Tavish."

"Aye! If ye make one more step toward the mill door ye'll not ken of a certainty whaur ye'll land when ye're upheaved."

After a few minutes of the silence of that armed truce, Miss Bunker tiptoed over to Mac Tavish, making an excuse of a sheet of paper which she laid before him; the paper was blank. "Daddy Mac!" Miss Bunker enjoyed that privilege in nomenclature along with other privileges usually won in offices by young ladies who know how to do their work well and are able to smooth human nature the right way. She went on in a solicitous whisper. "We must be sure that we're not making any office mistake. This being Senator Corson!"

"I still hae me orders, lassie!"

"But listen, Daddy Mac! When I came from the post-office the Senator's car went past me. Miss Lana was with him. Don't you think we ought to get a word to Mr. Morrison?"

"Word o' what?" The old man wrinkled his nose, already sniffing what was on the way.

"Why, that Miss Lana may be calling, along with her father."

"What then?"

"Mr. Morrison is a gentleman, above all things," declared the girl, nettled by this supercilious interrogation. "If Miss Corson calls with her father and is obliged to wait, Mr. Morrison will be mortified. Very likely he will be angry because he wasn't notified. I understand the social end of things better than you, Daddy Mac. I think it's my duty to take in a word to him."

"Aye! Yus! Gude! And tell him the music is ready, the flowers are here, and the tea is served! Use the office for all owt but the wool business. To Auld Hornie wi' the wool business! Politeeks and socieety! Lass, are ye gone daffie wi' the rest?"

"Hush, Daddy Mac! Don't raise your voice in your temper. What if he should still be in love with Miss Lana, spite of her being away among the great folks all this long time?"

Mac Tavish was holding the paper-weights. He banged them down on his desk and shoved his nose close to hers. "Fash me nae mair wi' your silly talk o' love, in business hours! If aye he wanted her when she was here at hame and safe and sensible, the Morrison o' the Morrisons had only to reach his hand to her and say, 'Coom, lass!' But noo that she is back wi' head high and notions alaft, he'd no accept her! She's nowt but a draft signed by Sham o' Shoddy and sent through the Bank o' Brag and Blaw! No! He'd no' accept her! And now back wi' ye to yer tickety-tack! I hae my orders, and the Queen o' Sheba might yammer and be no' the gainer!"

Miss Bunker swept up the sheet of blank paper with a vicious dab and went back to her work, crumpling it. Passing the hat-tree, she was tempted to grab the Morrison's coat and waistcoat and run into the mill with them, dodging Mac Tavish and his paper-weights in spite of what she knew of his threats regarding the use he proposed to make of them in case of need. She believed that Miss Lana Corson would come to the office with the others who were riding in the automobile. She had her own special cares and a truly feminine apprehension in this matter, and she believed that the young man, who was one of the guests at the reopened Corson mansion on Corson Hill, was a suitor, just as Marion gossip asserted he was.

Miss Bunker had two good eyes in her head and womanly intuitiveness in her soul, and she had read three times into empty air a dictated letter while Stewart Morrison looked past her in the direction which the Corson car had taken that first day when Lana Corson had shown herself on the street.

And here was that stiff-necked old watch-dog callously laying his corns so that Stewart Morrison would appear to be boor enough to allow a young lady to wait along with that unspeakable rabble; and when he did come he would arrive in his shirt-sleeves to be matched up against a handsome young man in an Astrakhan top-coat! Under those circumstances, what view would Miss Lana Corson take of the man who had stayed in Marion? Miss Bunker was profoundly certain that Mac Tavish did not know what love was and never did understand and could not be enlightened at that period in his life. But he might at least put the matter on a business basis, she reflected, incensed, and show some degree of local pride in grabbing in with the rest of Mr. Morrison's friends to assist in a critical situation.

And right then the situation became pointedly critical.

The broad door of the office was flung open by a chauffeur.

It was the Corson party.

Colonel Shaw was not in a mood to apologize for anybody except himself. He rose and saluted. "Coming here to herald your call, Senator Corson, I have been insulted by a bumptious understrapper and held in leash by an ignorant policeman. They say it's according to a rule of the Morrison mills. I suppose that when Mayor Morrison comes out of the mill at ten o'clock, following his own rule, he can explain to you why he maintains that insulting custom of his and continues this kind of an office crew to enforce it."

Miss Bunker flung the sheet of paper that she had crumpled into a ball and it struck Mac Tavish on the side of the head that he bent obtrusively over his figures.

The old man snapped stiffly upright and distributed implacable stare among the members of the newly arrived party. He was not softened by Miss Corson's glowing beauty, nor impressed by the United States Senator's dignity, nor won by the charming smile of Miss Corson's well-favored squire, nor daunted by the inquiring scowl of a pompous man whose mutton-chop whiskers mingled with the beaver fur about his neck; a stranger who was patently prosperous and metropolitan.

Furthermore, Mac Tavish, undaunted, promptly dared to exchange growls with "Old Dog Tray," himself. The latter, none else than His Excellency, Lawrence North, Governor of the state, marched toward the wicket, wagging his tail, but the wagging was not a display of amiability. The politicians called North "Old Dog Tray" because his permanent limp caused his coattails to sway when he walked.

"Be jing! I've been on the job here at manny a deal of a morn," confided Officer Rellihan to Calvin Dow, "but here's the first natural straight flush r'yal, dealt without a draw." He tagged the Corson party with estimating squints, beginning with the Governor. "Ace, king, queen, John-jack, and the ten-spot! They've caught the office, this time, with a two-spot high!"

Mac Tavish played it pat! "And 'tis the mill rule; it lacks twal' meenutes o' the hour—and the clock yon on the wall is richt!" Thus referring all responsibility to the clock, the paymaster dipped his pen and went on with his figures.

The Governor cross-creased the natural deep furrows in his face with ridges which registered indignant amazement. "You have lost your wits, but you seem to have your eyes! Use them!"

"It's the mill rule!"

"But we are not here on mill business!"

"Then it canna concern me."

"Officer, do you know what part of the mill Mayor Morrison is in?" The
Governor turned from Mac Tavish to Rellihan.

"He is nae sic thing as mayor till ten o' the clock and till he cooms here for the crackin wi' yon corbies!" declared the old paymaster, pointing derogatory penstock through the wicket at "the crows" who were ranged along the settees.

Rellihan shook his head.

"Well, at any rate, go hunt him up," commanded His Excellency.

Rellihan shook his head again; this seemed to be an occasion where unnecessary talking fell under interdiction; for that matter, Rellihan possessed only a vocabulary to use in talking down to the proletariat; he was debarred from telling these dignitaries to "shut up and sit aisy!"

"A blind man, now a dumb man—Colonel Shaw, go and hunt up the man we're here to see!"

The colonel feigned elaborately not to hear.

"And finally a deaf one! Take off those ear-tabs! Go and bring the mayor here!"

Mac Tavish dropped from his stool, armed himself with two paper-weights, and took up a strategic position near the door which led into the passage to the mill.

"Roderick Dhu at bay! Impressive tableau!" whispered the young man of the Corson party in Lana's ear, displaying such significant and wonted familiarity that Miss Bunker, employing her vigilance exclusively in the direction in which her fears and her interest lay, sighed and muttered.

The door of the corridor was flung open suddenly! The staccato of the orchestra of the looms sounded more loudly and provided entrance music. Astonishment rendered Mac Tavish hors de combat. He dropped his weights and his lower jaw sagged.

It was the Morrison—breaking the ancient rule of St. Ronan's—ten minutes ahead of time!