excitedly to a
knot of working-men. He ceased as the car drove up, and cast back a
broad proud smile at the candidate's warm greeting.

"I got up the old 'bus so nice and proper, with all your colours and
posters, and it would have been a spectacular Diorama for these 'ere
poor people; but you know for why I didn't bring it out to-day, don't
you, sonny?"

"I know, dear old friend," said Paul.

"I 'adn't the 'cart to."

"What were you speechifying about when I turned up?"

Barney Bill jerked a backward thumb. "I was telling this pack of
cowardly Radicals that though I've been a Tory born and bred for sixty
odd years, and though I've voted for you, Silas Finn, for all he was in
prison while most of them were sucking wickedness and Radicalism out of
Nature's founts, is just as good a man as what you are. They was
saying, yer see, they was Radicals, but on account of Silas being blown
upon, they was going to vote for you. So I tells 'em, I says, 'Mr.
Savelli would scorn your dirty votes. If yer feel low and Radical, vote
Radical. Mr. Savelli wants to play fair. I know both of 'em,' I says,
'both of 'em intimately.' And they begins to laugh, as if I was talking
through my hat. Anyway, they see now I know you, sonny."

Paul laughed and clapped the loyal old man on the shoulder. Then he
turned to the silent but interested group. "Gentlemen," said he, "I
don't want to inquire on which side you are; but you can take it from
me that whatever my old friend Mr. Simmons says about Mr. Finn and
myself is the absolute truth. If you're on Mr. Finn's side in politics,
in God's name vote for him. He's a noble, high-souled man and I'm proud
of his private friendship."

He drew Barney Bill apart. "You're the only Tory in the place who can
try to persuade people not to vote for me. I wish you would keep on
doing it."

"I've been a-doing of it ever since the polls opened this morning,"
said Barney Bill. Then he cocked his head on one side and his little
eyes twinkled: "It's an upside-down way of fighting an election to
persuade people not to vote for you, isn't it?"

"Everything is topsy-turvy with me, these days," Paul replied: "so
we've just got to stand on our heads and make the best of it."

And he drove off in the gathering dusk.

Night found him in the great chamber of the Town Hall, with his agent
and members of his committee. Present too were the Liberal Agent and
the members of the Liberal Committee. At one end of the