A shadow had fallen upon the train--the shadow of the huge Reuton station. In the half-light on the platform Mr. Magee encountered the mayor of Reuton. Above the lessening roar of the train there sounded ahead of them the voices of men in turmoil and riot. Mr. Cargan turned upon Magee a face as placid and dispassionate as that of one who enters an apple orchard in May. "The boys," he smiled grimly, "welcoming me home." Then the train came to a stop, and Mr. Magee looked down into a great array of faces, and heard for the first time the low unceasing rumble of an angry mob. Afterward he marveled at that constant guttural roar, how it went on and on, humming like a tune, never stopping, disconnected quite from the occasional shrill or heavy voices that rang out in distinguishable words. The mayor looked coolly down into those upturned faces, he listened a moment to the rumble of a thousand throats, then he took off his derby with satiric politeness. "Glad to see one and all!" he cried. And now above the mutterings angry words could be heard, "That's him," "That's two-hundred-thousand-dollar Cargan," "How's the weather on Baldpate?" and other sarcastic flings. Then a fashion of derisive cat-calls came and went. After which, here and there, voices spoke of ropes, of tar and feathers. And still the mayor smiled as one for whom the orchard gate swung open in May. A squad of policemen, who had entered the car from the rear, forced their way out on to the platform. "Want us to see you through the crowd, Mr. Cargan?" the lieutenant asked. New hoots and cries ascended to the station rafters. "Who pays the police?" "We do." "Who owns 'em?" "Cargan." Thus question and answer were bandied back and forth. Again a voice demanded in strident tones the ignominious tar and feathers. Jim Cargan had not risen from the slums to be master of his town without a keen sense of the theatric. He ordered the police back into the car. "And stay there," he demanded. The lieutenant demurred. One look from the mayor sent him scurrying. Mr. Cargan took from his pocket a big cigar, and calmly lighted it. "Some of them guys out there," he remarked to Magee, "belong to the Sunday-school crowd. Pretty actions for them--pillars of the church howling like beasts." And still, like that of beasts, the mutter of the mob went on, now in an undertone, now louder, and still that voice that first had plead for tar and feathers plead still--for feathers and tar. And here a group preferred the rope. And toward them, with the bland smile of a child on his great face, his cigar tilted at one angle, his derby at another, the mayor of Reuton walked unflinchingly.