He was beginning to see now that the case of Sally would have to be reconsidered. In spite of the damnable independence which had always been hers from the time she was as high as the dining-room table, there was no doubt that she was now fighting hard for a cause worth fighting for. He had not reached the point of telling Mossop to put her back in his will, but the conviction was growing upon him that he would have to do so. At the same time it was going to hurt. He could have wished now that he hadn't been quite so hasty in the matter. It was not his way to indulge in vain regrets or to pay much attention to unsolicited advice, but it seemed a pity that he had not listened to Mossop in the first instance. This business of Sally, in a manner of speaking, would be in the nature of a public climb down. And there had been one already. As far as Melia and her husband were concerned his conscience pricked him more than a little. At first it had gone sorely against the grain to revoke the ban upon his contemptuously defiant eldest daughter and his former barman. But once having done so, it had come suddenly upon him that he had gone wrong in that affair from the outset. The provocation had been great, but he had let his feelings master him. Melia and Hollis were not exonerated. She ought to have shown more respect for his wishes, and a man in the position of Hollis ought to prove himself before he ventures to ask for his employer's daughter; but, if he had to deal with the episode again, he felt, in the light of later experience, that he would have acted differently. However, by the end of November, Josiah had made up his mind to restore Melia and Sally to his will. It was only a question of when he should do so. But this was a matter in which his usual power of volition seemed to desert him. In other affairs of life to decide on a thing was at once to do it; but now he hesitated, putting off from day to day. It was a dose of particularly disagreeable medicine that there seemed no immediate need to swallow. A day soon came, however, when he was rather bitterly to rue his vacillation. One morning Josiah arrived at the City Hall at a quarter to ten. A meeting of the Ways and Means Committee was called for a quarter past and he had to take the chair in the Mayor's parlor. When he entered the room he found the Town Clerk standing in front of a fire of the Best Blackhampton Bright, a twinkle in his eye and a formidable sheaf of documents in his hand. "Good morning, Mr. Mayor." Perhaps a faintly quizzical greeting, respectful though it was. But this shrewd dog Aylett, with a pair of humorous eyes looking through gold-rimmed glasses which hung by a cord from his neck, had a slightly quizzical manner with everybody. He knew his value to the city of Blackhampton; he was the ablest Town Clerk it had ever had. "Mornin', Aylett," said his worship in that official voice which seemed to get deeper and deeper at every meeting over which he presided.