- taries public use in their little businesses. And in Illinois
the governor has no privy seal as he has in some commonwealths. The governor warmed the sealing-wax in the gas-jet that blazed beside him in the vault. When it began to melt he dribbled and daubed its softened substance, drop by drop, on the combination of the huge safe, as a girl would seal a letter. When he had quite covered the lock with the molten wax, he sealed it with the seal ring he wore on his left hand, a ring which bore the coat-of-arms of a colonial governor. The midnight secret of those two men, whatever it might be, was either safe with them or more safely still, sealed with other secrets behind those massive doors. And then he turned the gas down until only a tiny star blinked in the vault, and came out, and swung together the big steel gates that clanked like prison bars, their locks snapping automatically.
He returned to the outer door of the department and placed his hand upon the knob.
"Gentlemen," he said ceremoniously, "I await your pleasure."
He bent his gaze full upon William Grigsby, and that little man, throwing back his head with some-
