For the company, Arcadia life was one grand, sweet song, with, thus far, but a single discord. As has been said, Arcadia was laid out on the plain. There was higher ground on three sides--Rainbow Mountain to the east, the deltas of La Luz Creek and the Alamo to the north and south. New Mexico was dry, as a rule. After the second exception, when enthusiastic citizens went about on stilts to forward a project for changing the town's name to Venice, the company acknowledged its error handsomely. When dry land prevailed once more above the face of the waters, it built a mighty moat by way of the _amende honorable_--a moat with its one embankment on the inner side of the five-mile horseshoe about the town. This, with its attendant bridges, gave to Arcadia an aspect singularly medieval. It also furnished a convenient line of social demarcation. Chauffeurs, college professors, lawyers, gamblers, county officers, together with a few tradesmen and railroad officials, abode within "the Isle of Arcady," on more or less even terms with the Arcadians proper; millmen, railroaders, lumberjacks, and the underworld generally, dwelt without the pale. The company rubbed its lamp again--and behold! an armory, a hospital and a library! It contributed liberally to churches and campaign funds; it exercised a general supervision over morals and manners. For example, in the deed to every lot sold was an ironclad, fire-tested, automatic and highly constitutional forfeiture clause, to the effect that sale or storage on the premises of any malt, vinous or spirituous liquors should immediately cause the title to revert to the company. The company's own vicarious saloon, on Lot Number One, was a sumptuous and magnificent affair. It was known as The Mint. All this while we have been trying to reach the night watchman. In the early youth of Arcadia there came to her borders a warlock Finn, of ruddy countenance and solid build. He had a Finnish name, and they called him Lars Porsena. Lars P. had been a seafaring man. While spending a year's wage in San Francisco, he had wandered into Arcadia by accident. There, being unable to find the sea, he became a lumberjack--with a custom, when in spirits, of beating the watchman of that date into an omelet. The indulgence of this penchant gave occasion for much adverse criticism. Fine and imprisonment failed to deter him from this playful habit. One watchman tried to dissuade Lars from his foible with a club, and his successor even went so far as to shoot him--to shoot Lars P., of course, not his predecessor--the successor's predecessor, not Lars Porsena's--if he ever had one, which he hadn't. (What we need is more pronouns.) He--the successor of the predecessor--resigned when Lars became convalescent; but Lars was no whit dismayed by this contretemps--in his first light-hearted moment he resumed his old amusement with unabated gayety.