At the left-hand side of the building there was an entrance hall, through which one passed to reach the stairs that led up to the council chamber. In the middle of this square hallway hung a rope, with a knot on the end. This rope disappeared through a hole in the ceiling. If you pulled it in the proper fashion, the bell in the steeple began a chattering, staccato beat like the clanging of a gong. This was the fire bell; and when it rang the fire chief came from his feed store across the street, and the firemen came from the bakery, and the hardware store, and the blacksmith shop where they worked; and the fat fire horses--they doubled in the street-cleaning department--came on the gallop from their abandoned wagons in the streets. Then everybody got into harness of one kind or another and went to the fire. Everybody in town wanted to ring that fire bell. Any one who discovered a fire and reached the fire house with the news was privileged to do it. There was a tradition that a boy once tried to ring the bell and was jerked clear off the floor by the rebound after his first tug at the rope. This added to the wonder and the mystery of it. The boys used to hang around the doorway, watching this rope, and occasionally fingering it in a gingerly way, and wishing a fire would start somewhere so that they might see the bell rung. It was through this hall where the rope hung that the people of Hardiston crowded to see Wint inaugurated. They went up the worn, wooden stairs into the council chamber, and they packed themselves in on the benches in the rear of the room. This was not only the council chamber; it was the seat of the Mayor’s court. There was an enclosure, surrounded by a railing. When some of the bigger, or perhaps it was only the braver, men of the town came in, they sat inside this railing, tilting their chairs back against it, with a spittoon drawn within easy range. The crowd came early; and they talked in cheerfully loud tones while they waited. One by one the aldermen drifted in, the new ones and the old. And Marshal Jim Radabaugh was there; and the clerk and the other officials arrived and took their places within the enclosure. They were carelessly matter of fact, as though the inauguration of a new Mayor was an everyday matter. The boys, perched on the window sills, whistled, and giggled, and then subsided into frightened silence to watch with staring eyes. Amos Caretall had let Wint sleep as late as possible this morning. Wint needed the sleep, and Congressman Caretall made it his business to study the needs of his fellow men. His Congressional creed, which he summarized upon occasion, was as simple as that. “If a bill’s aimed to make you folks at home here more comfo’table, I’m for it,” he would say. “If it ain’t, I’m against it; and that’s all the way of it with me.” So he let Wint sleep this morning until the last minute, then shook him into wakefulness.