There was a big bonfire on the circus grounds, and a celebration in Court House Square that night. The next day there was a great vacuum in the City Hall, for the Board of Aldermen resigned unanimously. A special election was called, and before Jap was strong enough to sit at his case he had been elected Mayor of Bloomtown. He looked sadly from the window of his bedroom, after the joyous crowd of serenaders that had come to congratulate him. Bill had followed in their wake, to escort Rosy home. It was late. The clock in the Presbyterian church spire chimed twelve, as he stood alone. He took his hat from the rack and went cautiously downstairs. On the pavement he paused a moment to steady himself. His head still reeled after any unwonted exertion. Then he walked slowly up Main street, across the railroad tracks, and out to the quiet village whose inhabitants slept 'neath marble and sod. Standing beside the grave of his first friend, he said: "Ellis, make the town proud of your boy. Help me to be your right hand. If I can only fulfill your plan, I am willing that no other ambition be fulfilled." A lonely night bird called softly. The willow branches waved in the breeze. Thick darkness hung over the City of the Dead. Suddenly the moon peered through the clouds, flooding the night with beauty, and Jap read from the stone the last message of Ellis: "I go, but not as one unsatisfied. In God's plan, my work will live." CHAPTER XIII "Now that you've got it, Jap," asked Tom Granger, "what are you going to do with it?" Jap looked silently from the door. "He put in about eight hours of thinking about that himself," Bill averred. "News is that ten saloons are loaded on freight cars, waiting word from Jap." "You'll have to strike a happy medium," suggested Tom. "I know that you are the boy to deliver the goods." "Ellis wasn't against saloons," commented Bill, "so Jap won't have that to chew over. Ellis wasn't either for or against 'em." "No," Tom said seriously, "Ellis was dead set against hypocrisy. He hated a liar and a grafter worse than a murderer. He knew that the way to make people want a thing was to tell 'em they couldn't have it." Jap's face was grave. A panorama of wretched pictures moved slowly before his wandering gaze, pictures that began and ended in Mike's place, in the half-forgotten village of Happy Hollow. He aroused himself with a start. "I'm going to put it up to the new Board to allow as many saloons as want to, to come in," he said shortly. Tom Granger let go a shrill whistle. "At the license asked," continued Jap calmly. "The license will be three thousand dollars a year, and strict enforcement of all laws. At the first break, the lid will fall." "Jumping cats!" howled Tom. "Where will you get the saloon that'll pay that?"