At five minutes past eight the hall was crowded. Manson was there, sitting in the front row, and leaning forward on his heavy oak stick which seemed a very bludgeon of authority. Beside him sat his wife, small, slight and gentle, the very antithesis of her dark and formidable husband. Manson's eyes roved from Filmer to Clark and back again to Filmer, but the two looked over his head and seemed no whit disconcerted. A little further back were the Dibbotts, the former turning his big gray-coated body, and every now and then surveying the growing audience with his small blue eyes, while his lips pushed in and out, which was in Dibbott a certain sign that he was thinking hard. Mrs. Dibbott, tall, slim, and square shouldered, turned her kindly capable face toward Clark, and felt the first intimation of that keen interest he always roused, especially in the women who met him. He seemed so alert, such a free agent and, it must be confessed, so disgracefully independent of the gentler sex. Then there was Belding, the young engineer who had had charge of the town's work at the canal. It was not Belding's fault that the money ran out, but he had ceased operations with an unshakable sense of personal blame that, of late, worked poisonously in his brain. There were also the Bowers, and Mrs. Bowers' ample and genial person was full of a pleasurable glow, for if the mayor's plan went through they would have at last a roof over the front porch on which she spent so many hospitable summer evenings. Bowers himself already saw in Clark a possible and important client, and his brain was full of half formulated propositions. At seven minutes past eight the mayor began to speak. He had been somewhat at a loss just how he might introduce Clark, for, as a matter of fact, the only information he had about the visitor was what the visitor himself had volunteered. But here, as always, Clark's tremendous personality had expressed itself. Filmer glanced at his alert but motionless figure, and perceived that the other was a man of much greater experience and power than himself, and in this the mayor was subject to exactly that influence which Clark was in the habit of exerting without any effort whatever. So thus reinforced, and mindful as well that the half yearly interest and sinking fund payments would be due on the town debt in three months, he fastened an authoritative eye on Manson, the town pessimist, and commenced.