ion.

"Lalage."

I forgot all about the Association for the Suppression of Public Lying
and its offer of help when I arrived in Ireland. Mr. Titherington came
up to Dublin to meet me and showed every sign of keeping me very
busy indeed. He turned out to be a timber merchant by profession, who
organized elections by way of recreation whenever opportunity offered. I
was told in the office of the Conservative and Unionist Association that
no man living was more crafty in electioneering than Mr. Titherington,
and that I should do well to trust myself entirely to his guidance. I
made up my mind to do so. My uncle who also met me in Dublin, had been
making inquiries of his own about Mr. Titherington and gave me the
results of them in series of phrases which, I felt sure, he had picked
up from somebody else. "Titherington," he said, "has his finger on
the pulse of the constituency." "There isn't a trick of the trade but
Titherington is thoroughly up to it." "For taking the wind out of
the sails of the other side Titherington is absolutely A1." All this
confirmed me in my determination to follow Mr. Titherington, blindfold.

The first time I met him he told me that we were going to have a sharp
contest and gave me the impression that he was greatly pleased. A
third candidate had taken the field, a man in himself despicable, whose
election was an impossibility; but capable perhaps of detaching from me
a number of votes sufficient to put the Nationalist in the majority.

"And O'Donoghue, let me tell you," said Titherington, "is a smart man
and a right good speaker."

"I'm not," I said.

"I can see that."

I do not profess to know how he saw it. So far as I know, inability to
make speeches does not show on a man's face, and Titherington had no
other means of judging at that time except the appearance of my face. No
one in fact, not even my mother, could have been sure then that I was a
bad speaker. I had never spoken at a public meeting.

"But," said Titherington, "we'll pull you through all right. That
blackguard Vittie can't poll more than a couple of hundred."

"Vittie," I said "is, I suppose, the tertium quid, not the Nationalist.
I'm sorry to trouble you with inquiries of this kind, but in case of
accident it's better for me to know exactly who my opponents are."

"He calls himself a Liberal. He's going baldheaded for some temperance
fad and is backed by a score or so of Presbyterian ministers. We'll have
to