Therefore the disposition of the money was left to him.  Do not, however, oh high-minded and honorable reader, be too ready to suppose that this was the end of the five thousand dollars, so far as the Rookeries are concerned.  Politicians of the O’Farrell type may not be meticulous on points of finance.  But they are quite likely to be human.  Tip O’Farrell had seen recently more misery than even his toughened sensibilities could uncomplainingly endure.  Some of the fund may have gone into the disburser’s pocket.  A much greater portion of it, I am prepared to affirm, was distributed in those intimate and effective forms of beneficence which, skillfully enough managed, almost lose the taint of charity.  O’Farrell was tactful and he knew his people.  Many cases over which organized philanthropy would have blundered sorely, were handled with a discretion little short of inspired.  Much wretchedness was relieved; much suffering and perhaps some lives saved.

The main issue, nevertheless, was untouched.  The epidemic continued to spread beneath the surface of silence.  O’Farrell wasn’t interested in that side of it.  He didn’t even know what was the matter.  What money he expended on that phase of the difficulty was laid out in perfecting his system of guards, so that unauthorized doctors couldn’t get in, or unauthorized news leak out.  Also he continued to carry on an irregular but costly traffic in dead bodies.  Meantime, the Special Committee of the Old Home Week Organization, thus comfortably relieved of responsibility and the appropriation, could now devote itself single-mindedly to worrying over the “Clarion.”

According to Elias M. Pierce, no mean judge of men, there was nothing to worry about in that direction.  That snake, he considered, was scotched.  It might take time for said snake, who was a young snake with a head full of poison (his uncomplimentary metaphor referred, I need hardly state, to Mr. Harrington Surtaine), to come to his serpentine senses; but in the end he must realize that he was caught.  The committee wasn’t so smugly satisfied.  Time was going on and there was no word, one way or the other, from the “Clarion” office.

Inside that office more was stirring than the head of it knew about.  On a warmish day, McGuire Ellis, seated at his open window, had permitted the bland air of early June to lull him to a nap, which was rudely interrupted by the intrusion of a harsh point amongst his waistcoat buttons.  Stumbling hastily to his feet he confronted Dr. Miles Elliot.

“Wassamatter?” he demanded, in the thick tones of interrupted sleep.  “What are you poking me in the ribs for?”

“McBurney’s point,” observed the visitor agreeably.  “Now, if you had appendicitis, you’d have yelped.  You haven’t got appendicitis.”

“Much obliged,” grumped Mr. Ellis.  “Couldn’t you tell me that without a cane?”

“I spoke to you twice, but all you replied was ‘Hoong!’ As I speak only the Mandarin dialect of Chinese—­”