bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of
thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll. But they are not
going to have it their own way in future--not in future, you know.
Middlemarch is a little backward, I admit--the freemen are a little
backward. But we shall educate them--we shall bring them on, you
know. The best people there are on our side."

"Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm," remarked
Sir James. "He says Bulstrode the banker will do you harm."

"And that if you got pelted," interposed Mrs. Cadwallader, "half the
rotten eggs would mean hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens!
Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions. And I seem to
remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into
a dust-heap on purpose!"

"Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat," said the
Rector. "I confess that's what I should be afraid of, if we parsons
had to stand at the hustings for preferment. I should be afraid of
their reckoning up all my fishing days. Upon my word, I think the
truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with."

"The fact is," said Sir James, "if a man goes into public life he must
be prepared for the consequences. He must make himself proof against
calumny."

"My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Brooke.
"But how will you make yourself proof against calumny? You should read
history--look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of
thing. They always happen to the best men, you know. But what is that
in Horace?--'fiat justitia, ruat . . . something or other."

"Exactly," said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual. "What I
mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact
as a contradiction."

"And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's
self," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

But it was Sir James's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke.
"Well, you know, Chettam," he said, rising, taking up his hat and
leaning on his stick, "you and I have a different system. You are all
for outlay with your farms. I don't want to make out that my system is
good under all circumstances--under all circumstances, you know."

"There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time," said Sir
James. "Returns are very well occasionally, but I like a fair
valuation. What do you say, Cadwallader?"

"I agree with you. If I were Brook