"
"I was thinking the same thing," said McMurdo. "I'll go right
now and fix it. You can tell your father that I'll sleep here
to-night and find some other quarters in the morning."
The bar of McGinty's saloon was crowded as usual; for it was the
favourite loafing place of all the rougher elements of the town.
The man was popular; for he had a rough, jovial disposition which
formed a mask, covering a great deal which lay behind it. But
apart from this popularity, the fear in which he was held
throughout the township, and indeed down the whole thirty miles
of the valley and past the mountains on each side of it, was
enough in itself to fill his bar; for none could afford to
neglect his good will.
Besides those secret powers which it was universally believed
that he exercised in so pitiless a fashion, he was a high public
official, a municipal councillor, and a commissioner of roads,
elected to the office through the votes of the ruffians who in
turn expected to receive favours at his hands. Assessments and
taxes were enormous; the public works were notoriously neglected,
the accounts were slurred over by bribed auditors, and the decent
citizen was terrorized into paying public blackmail, and holding
his tongue lest some worse thing befall him.
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