round and see our committee-men
to-night?"

"Time enough to-morrow; most of them are just going to bed. But how is
it no one had an inkling of this? They have kept the secret uncommonly
well."

"The blackguards! Ha, ha! Now for a good fight! It'll be old
Welwyn-Baker, after all, you'll see. They won't have the courage to set
up a new man at a moment's notice. The old buffer will come maudling
once more, and we'll bowl him off his pins!"

Lilian sat with her eyes fixed upon him. His excitement infected her,
and when they went home together she talked of the coming struggle with
joyous animation.

CHAPTER XV

The next morning--Tuesday, March 9th--there was a rush for the London
papers. Every copy that reached the Polterham vendors was snapped up
within a few minutes of its arrival. People who had no right of
membership ran ravening to the Literary Institute and the
Constitutional Literary Society, and peered over the shoulders of
legitimate readers, on such a day as this unrebuked. Mr. Chown's
drapery establishment presented a strange spectacle. For several hours
it was thronged with sturdy Radicals eager to hear their eminent friend
hold forth on the situation. At eleven o'clock Mr. Chown fairly mounted
a chair behind his counter, and delivered a formal harangue--thus, as
he boasted, opening the political campaign. He read aloud (for the
seventh time) Lord Beaconsfield's public letter to the Duke of
Marlborough, in which the country was warned, to begin with, against
the perils of Home Rule. "It is to be hoped that all men of light and
leading will resist this destructive doctrine.... Rarely in this
century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England
and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the verdict of the
country.... Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, of
England in the Councils of Europe."

"Here you have it," cried the orator, as he dashed the newspaper to his
feet, "pure, unadulterated Jingoism! 'Ascendancy in the Councils of
Europe!' How are the European powers likely to hear _that_, do you
think? I venture to tell my Lord Beaconsfield--I venture to tell him on
behalf of this constituency--aye, and on behalf of this country--that
it is _he_ who holds 'destructive doctrine'! I venture to tell my Lord
Beaconsfield that England is not prepared to endorse any such insolent
folly! We shall very soon have an opportunity of hearing how far such
doctrine recom