to drop in, and the place would liven up, but now the monotonous ticking of the Western Union clock on the wall could be heard all over the long room, and the big Maltese cat snoozed lazily at one end of the bar.
Malachi was not feeling as well as usual this morning, though his exterior was as clean and calm as ever. A fever burned beneath his great waistcoat, and on coming down he had drunk a bottle of mineral water. The truth is, that the night before, Malachi had so far departed from the habit of his methodical life as to drink much whisky, a thing he had not done for years, ever since the occasion, in fact, when celebrating a reëlection to the council, he had drunk so much that he was constrained to enter a barber shop in State Street, and terrorize the barbers by sticking all the razors in the floor, like a juggler he had seen playing with knives in a theater. The gang had been in the saloon until three o'clock that morning. They had just passed an ordinance granting a new franchise to the Metropolitan Motor Company, and in one of the walnut stalls the bundle had been cut, as the phrase is. The gang had grown so hilarious, as it always did on such occasions, that
