On the night of the council meeting, Sharpe and Trimmer and Williams, representing the Consolidated, were compelled to come before the council and confess their inability to take up the bonds required to renew their franchise; but they begged that this clause, since it was an entirely unnecessary one and was not enjoined upon gas or electric companies in other cities, be not enforced. Council, however, was obdurate, and the committee thereupon begged for a further extension of time in which to raise the necessary amount of money. Council still was obdurate, and by that obduracy the franchise of the Consumers' Electric Company, said franchise being controlled by the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company, became null and void. Thereupon Bobby Burnit, President De Graff and Dan Elliston, representing the New Brightlight Electric Company, recently organized for three million dollars, came forward and prayed for a franchise for the electric lighting of the entire city, agreeing to take over the poles and wiring of the Consolidated at a fair valuation; and council was not at all obdurate, which was scarcely strange when one reflected that every member of that municipal body had been selected and put in place through the direct instrumentality of Bobby Burnit. It was practical politics, true enough, but Bobby had no qualms whatever about it. "It may be quite true that I have not been actuated by any highly noble motives in this," he confessed to a hot charge by Williams, "but so long as in municipal affairs I am not actuated by any ignoble motives I am doing pretty fairly in this town." There was just the bare trace of brutality in Bobby as he said this, and he suddenly recognized it in himself with dismay. What pity Bobby might have felt for these bankrupt men, however, was swept away in a gust of renewed aggressiveness when Trimmer, arousing himself from the ashen age which seemed all at once to be creeping over him, said, with a return of that old circular smile which had so often before aggravated Bobby: "I am afraid I'll have to draw out of my other ventures and retire on my salary as president and manager of Trimmer and Company." Vengefulness was in Bobby's eyes as he followed Trimmer's sprawling figure, so much like a bloated spider's in its bigness of circumference and its attenuation of limbs, that suddenly he shuddered and turned away as when one finds oneself about to step upon a toad. CHAPTER XXX IN WHICH, BEING THE LAST CHAPTER, EVERYTHING TURNS OUT RIGHT, AND EVERYBODY GETS MARRIED At the offices of the New Brightlight Electric Company there was universal rejoicing. Johnson was removed from the _Bulletin_ to take charge of the new organization until it should be completed, and Bobby himself, for a few days, was compelled to spend most of his time there. During the first week after the granting of the franchise Bobby called Johnson to him.