Beaumont, however, had tossed off a bumper of the beady and gaseous compound with a flourish to the health of the Mayor, and whilst questioning convictions that forced a man to prefer zoedone to champagne, vowed he admired the Mayor’s pluck and consistency, and protested that it was worth while to run the risk of being poisoned to sit at table with a man of principle. Of course, this sentiment had reached the Mayor’s ears, and had not only greatly comforted him and sustained him in presence of the rueful countenances of his guests, but had led him ever after to entertain a high opinion of Beaumont’s discrimination. And though he mourned over the young councillor's infidelity, he was not without hopes some Christian Church might win him to its bosom, and lost no opportunity of speaking a word in season to his young colleague; and had even ventured to give him a Temperance Tract in an apologetic manner, assuring him that the passages marked by the Mayor’s own hand were not to be taken by Edward as offensively personal. Beaumont had taken all in good part, and when ribald members of the Council poked fun at the old gentleman, and called him an old woman, only fit to sit behind the urn at a tea-party, Beaumont had stoutly declared that beneath the mild and deferential, almost shrinking, manner of Mr. Hoyleham, lay a rare staunchness and fidelity to the right as he conceived it. The case against Patrick Sullivan was not taken till the charge-sheet was cleared of all others. Mr. Ward the Chief Constable, was determined to have that redoubtable breaker of the law and terror of the police safe under lock and key for so long a spell as the law could ensure, and he, of course, had heard only the version of the fracas given by the police and by Graham. The strong, most damaging point against Pat was his resistance of the police in the discharge of their duty. It was an article of faith with the Borough Bench that the police must be supported, and it was equally a matter of faith with those who had been summoned before it, or who expected to be, and with their witnesses, that the sworn testimony of one policeman would be taken before that of all Kirkgate put together. Sullivan was looked upon as a doomed man, as good as done for, and his sympathisers only found consolation in the resolve to make the place too hot to hold the complainant. With these sympathisers the back benches of the Court were crowded. They were there, male and female, some scores of them, in all states of dress and undress and all degrees of cleanliness and sobriety. They were all to a man and also woman known to the police, and most of them had stood in the very dock now tenanted by the redoubtable Sullivan, and those who had not looked forward to their appearance in that unenviable rectangle as a natural and inevitable incident in their career. Needless to say, the sympathies of this section of the audience in Court were entirely