ll you do me a final service? Go round to the
Conservative Club at once, and tell the meeting what has happened, and
give this to Colonel Winwood."

"With pleasure," said Wilson.

Then Paul shook hands with all his fellow-workers and thanked them in
his courtly way, and, pleading for solitude, went through the door of
the great chamber and, guided by an attendant, reached the exit in a
side street where his car awaited him. A large concourse of people
stood drawn up in line on each side of the street, marshalled by
policemen. A familiar crooked figure limped from the shadow of the
door, holding a hard felt hat, his white poll gleaming in the shaft of
light. "God bless you, sonny," he said in a hoarse whisper.

Paul took the old man by the arm and drew him across the pavement to
the car. "Get in," said he.

Barney Bill hung back. "No, sonny; no."

"It's not the first time we've driven together. Get in. I want you."

So Barney Bill allowed himself to be thrust into the luxurious car, and
Paul followed. And perhaps for the first time in the history of great
elections the successful candidate drove away from the place where the
poll was declared in dead silence, attended only by the humblest of his
constituents. But every man in the throng bared his head.

CHAPTER XXI

"HE had the stroke in the night," said Barney Bill suddenly.

Paul turned sharply on him. "Why wasn't I told?"

"Could you have cured him?"

"Of course not."

"Could you have done him any good?"

"I ought to have been told."

"You had enough of worries before you for one day, sonny."

"That was my business," said Paul.

"Jane and I, being as it were responsible parties, took the liberty, so
to speak, of thinking it our business too."

Paul drummed impatiently on his knees.

"Yer ain't angry, are you, sonny?" the old man asked plaintively.

"No--not angry--with you and Jane--certainly not. I know you acted for
the best, out of love for me. But you shouldn't have deceived me. I
thought it was a mere nervous breakdown--the strain and shock. You
never said a word about it, and Jane, when I talked to her this
morning, never gave me to dream there was anything serious amiss. So I
say you two have deceived me."

"But I'm a telling of yer, sonny--"

"Yes, yes, I know. I don't reproach you. But don't you see? I'm sick of
lies. Dead sick. I've been up to my neck in a bog of falsehood ever
since I was a child and I'm making a hell of a str