Page:The council of seven.djvu/267

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

struck ever nearer the surface. The Millennium was surely coming, all the morning and evening journals said so, but in the meantime life for the ordinary rate-*payer was growing impossible. Yet, said the noble army of Cat-Jumpers, with Blackhampton East now before their eyes, the hour of deliverance is near. Hence, the Anti-Trust Law! Hence, Down with the U. P.! Hence, the pyramids!

In the present condition of Denmark it was unwise to take anything for granted, but one fact was clear. The country was in bonds, but a recent event had shown that it was possible for its chains to be shed.

If deliverance was to come, however, it was now felt that the task would devolve upon one man. John Endor, in the opinion of the insiders, was that man. His recent victory was a torch. It focused every eye in the world of politics upon him. No one else could have won that battle, at any rate in just that way; and it became at once a talisman for all the spirits by nature free, whom the degrading conditions of modern political life were galling beyond endurance.

All things were possible now for John Endor. The dragon which was crushing the life out of the nation was not invulnerable. And one of the very few daily newspapers outside the Ring which had any authority, crystallized the feeling now uppermost in every perceptive mind when it came out one evening with its famous cartoon "The New Perseus."