The daily current of gossip in the streets no longer kept its cheerful, equable flow.

Citizens avoided each other's eyes, and talked either in hushed voices or with an almost febrile vehemence on any subject but that which lay closest to their thoughts.
But never did our Mayor display such strength, such unmistakable greatness, as during this, the last month--alas!--fate granted us to possess him.

Men eyed him on his daily walk, but he for his part eyed the weather: and the weather continued remarkably fine for the time of year.
So warm, so still, indeed, were the evenings, that in the third week of April he began to take his dessert, after dinner, out of doors on the terrace overlooking the harbour; and would sit and smoke there, alone with a book, until the shadows gathered and it grew too dark to read print.
"And you may tell Scipio to bring me out a bottle of the green-sealed Madeira," he commanded, on the evening of the twentieth.
"The green-sealed Madeira ?" echoed Miss Marty.

"You know, of course, that there is but a dozen or so left ?" "A dozen precisely; and to-day is the twentieth.

That leaves"-- the Major drummed with his fingers on the mahogany--"a bottle a night and one over.