it to the courts, and maybe I can turn enough light on you and His Honor and Frank Jordan to keep you from taking all the guts out of the work here."
"Why, Doctor, what a way to talk! Certainly I won't fire you," said Bissex, in the manner of one who has talked to difficult students and to lazy football teams. "Stay with us as long as you like. Only, in the interests of economy, I reduce your salary to eight hundred dollars a year!"
"All right, reduce and be damned," said Martin.
It sounded particularly fine and original when he said it, but less so when Leora and he found that, with their rent fixed by their lease, they could not by whatever mean economies live on less than a thousand a year.
Now that he was free from responsibility he began to form his own faction, to save the Department. He gathered Rabbi Rovine, Father Costello, Ockford, who was going to remain in town and practise, the secretary of the Labor Council, a banker who regarded Tredgold as "fast," and that excellent fellow the dentist of the school clinic.
"With people like that behind me, I can do something," he gloated to Leora. "I'm going to stick by it. I'm not going to have the D. P. H. turned into a Y. M. C. A. Bissex has all of Pickerbaugh's mush without his honesty and vigor. I can beat him! I'm not much of an executive, but I was beginning to visualize a D. P. H. that would be solid and not gaseous—that would save kids and prevent epidemics. I won't give it up. You watch me!"
His committee made representations to the Commercial Club, and for a time they were certain that the chief reporter of the Frontiersman was going to support them, "as soon as he could get his editor over being scared of a row." But Martin's belligerency was weakened by shame, for he never had enough money to meet his bills, and he was not used to dodging irate grocers, receiving dunning letters, standing at the door arguing with impertinent bill-collectors. He, who had been a city dignitary a few days before, had to endure, "Come on now, you pay up, you dead beat, or I'll get a cop!" When the shame had grown to terror, Dr. Bissex suddenly reduced his salary another two hundred dollars.
Martin stormed into the mayor's office to have it out, and found F. X. Jordan sitting with Pugh. It was evident that
