f the "Reserve" had been
exemplified in its superintendent. Squire Ormiston had never led his
wards to the polls--there were strong reasons against that. But the
squire made no secret of his politics, either before or, unluckily,
after he changed them. The Indians had always known that they were
voting on the same side as "de boss." They were likely, the friends
of Mr Winter thought, to know now that they were voting on a different
side. This was the secret of Mr Winter's friends' unusual diligence on
voting-day in Moneida. The mere indication of a wish on the part of the
superintendent would constitute undue influence in the eye of the law.
The squire was not the most discreet of men--often before it had been
the joke of Conservative councils how near the old man had come to
making a case for the Grits in connection with this chief or that. I
will not say that he was acquainted with the famous letter from Queen
Victoria, affectionately bidding her Indian children to vote for the
Conservative candidate. But perhaps he had not adhered to the strictest
interpretation of the law which gave him fatherly influence in
everything pertaining to his red-skinned charges' interests temporal and
spiritual, excepting only their sacred privilege of the ballot. He may
even have held it in some genial derision, their sacred privilege; it
would be natural, he had been there among them in unquestioned authority
so long. Now it had assumed an importance. The squire looked at it with
the ardour of a converted eye. When he told Mr Farquharson that he could
bring Moneida with him to a Liberal victory, he thought and spoke of the
farmers of the township not of his wards of the Reserve. Yet as the day
approached these would infallibly become voters in his eyes, to swell or
to diminish the sum of Moneida's loyalty to the Empire. They remembered
all this in the committee room of his old party. "The squire," they said
to one another, "will give himself away this time if ever he did." Then
young Murchison hadn't known any better than to spend the best part of
the day out there, and there were a dozen witnesses to swear that old
Ormiston introduced him to three or four of the chiefs. That was basis
enough for the boys detailed to watch Moneida, basis enough in the end
for a petition constructed to travel to the High Court at Toronto
for the purpose of rendering null and void the election of Mr Lorne
Murchison, and transferring the South Fox seat to t