"I have sent for you," he said, relinquishing the burning hand he had taken, and motioning Chester to be seated--"I have sent for you as a friend, to advise and counsel you." Chester bent his head, but did not speak. He sat down, however, for his limbs trembled with weakness. "I have put off the decision in your case longer than usual," resumed the Mayor, playing with a pen that lay on the desk before him, "because I was in hopes that something might come up to change the aspect of things. It is a very painful case, Mr. Chester, and I wish the responsibility rested somewhere else--but the evidence was conclusive. You heard it all--several persons testified to the same thing--no facts have appeared since, and as a sworn Magistrate, I must do my duty." Chester did not speak, his cheek and lips grew a shade paler than disease had left them, and he bent his large eyes, glittering with fever and excitement, full upon the Mayor. There was something in the glance of those eyes that made the Chief Magistrate sit uneasily on his leather cushion. He betook himself to making all kinds of incongruous marks upon a sheet of paper that lay before him. "I shall be compelled to break you," resumed his honor. "With the evidence, I could not answer to my constituents, were I to act otherwise; but there is a way, and it was for this I sent for you--there is a way by which the disgrace may be avoided. If you could make up your mind to resign now, on the score of ill-health, for instance--you really do look anything but robust--all the disgrace of expulsion would be got over at once, and I should be saved a very painful task." Chester arose, gently and firmly, the blood-red hectic flushed back to his cheek, and his eyes grew painfully brilliant. "You can disgrace me, sir; you can ruin me if you choose, I know that you have the power--that, against the very letter and spirit of our institutions, the breath of one man is potent to decide upon the fate of nine hundred of his fellow men--I know that the accused has no appeal from your decision if you decide unfairly--no redress from injustice should you be unjust. Knowing all this--knowing that, save in the magnitude of his power to do wrong, the autocrat of all the Russias possesses no authority more absolute than the citizens of New York have given to you, a single man, and a citizen like themselves--I say, knowing all this, and feeling in my own person all the injustice and all the peril it brings upon the individual, I will not, by my own act, give strength or color, for one instant, to the injustice you meditate. I will not resign--with my last breath I will protest, fruitlessly as I know, against the cruel fraud that has been practiced upon me."