Even in the stress of a terribly strenuous twelve months the Mayor of Blackhampton, like the wise man he was, insisted upon taking his annual fortnight's holiday at Bridlington. He had not missed his annual fortnight at Bridlington once in the last thirty years. It did him so much good, he was able to work so much the better for it afterwards, that, as he informed Mr. Aylett the Town Clerk, on the eve of departure in the second week of August, "it would take more than the likes o' the Kaiser to keep him from the seaside." Like a giant refreshed the Mayor returned to his civic duties at the end of the month. His leisure at Bridlington had been enlivened by the company of the Mayoress, by Mrs. Doctor Cockburn and her two children, and also by Miss Gertrude Preston, who for quite a number of years now had helped to beguile the tedium of her brother-in-law's annual rest cure. As soon as the Mayor returned to the scene of his labors he found there was one very important question he would have to decide. In his absence the City fathers had met several times to discuss the matter of his successor and had come, in some cases perhaps reluctantly, to the conclusion that none but himself could be his peer. According to the aldermanic roster, Mr. Limpenny the maltster was next in office, but that wise man was the first to own that he had not the driving power, or the breadth of appeal of the present mayor. In ordinary times that would not have mattered, but the times were very far from ordinary. War was making still sterner demands, week by week, upon every man and woman in the country. Blackhampton had done much, as every town in England had, but its temporal directors felt that no effort must be relaxed, and that it was ever increasingly their duty "to keep it up to the collar." And Josiah Munt now filled the popular mind.