"They like you here," continued Mr. Redling; "both sides. Take us for all in all we are not violent people. Give us the right sort of man, and we'll be sure he won't do us harm, whatever his politics," and then as Mr. Benoliel, who was acting as one of Rames's scrutineers, came to him with a doubtful voting paper, he switched off to another topic; and it happened quite naturally that he chose the very same subject as the chief constable had done. "Have you noticed our tapestry?" he asked. "We are proud of it. An American gentleman, a Mr. Cronin, came over here last week with Mr. Benoliel to see it. And after he had seen it, he wanted to buy it." "Oh, did he?" said Benoliel as he handed the voting paper to the Mayor. "But I might have guessed that he would. I brought him over from Culver, and we met Mrs. Royle just outside here. She came in with us. Mrs. Royle seemed as interested in the tapestry as Cronin himself." While Mr. Redling examined the voting paper, Harry Rames cast an eye over the tapestry. The æsthetic qualities formed a quite insignificant element in his nature. Of art he thought nothing at all. It noted in his mind long hair and an absence of baths--such was his ignorance. The only picture-gallery into which he had ever entered was the Royal Academy; and the only occasion upon which he had ventured over that threshold was the Academy dinner to which he had been invited after his return from his Antarctic expedition. He had a primitive appreciation of scarlet as a color and he recognized that women upon canvas could look beautiful. There for him art ended. So he gazed at the tapestry with a lack-lustre eye. There was no vividness of color, and the human forms worked upon it had an angularity and a thickness of joint which pleased him not at all. "I suppose it's very beautiful," he said. "It's unique," replied Mr. Benoliel; "that's why Cronin wanted it. Let a thing be unique, he'll not trouble his head so much about its beauty, and I am told he will ask no questions how it comes to be offered to him."