ight-thinking
inhabitants. It was a strange thing, a very strange thing indeed, that
interlopers should have been permitted to oust the wealth and
reputability of Polterham from an Institute which ought to have been
one of the bulwarks of Conservatism. Laxity in the original
constitution, and a spirit of supine confidence, had led to this sad
result. It seemed impossible that Polterham could ever fall from its
honourable position among the Conservative strongholds of the country;
but the times were corrupt, a revolutionary miasma was spreading to
every corner of the land. Polterham must no longer repose in the
security of conscious virtue, for if it _did_ happen that, at the
coming election, the unprincipled multitude even came near to achieving
a triumph, oh what a fall were there!

Thus spoke the _Mercury_. And in the same week Mr. Mumbray's vacant
house was secured by a provisional committee on behalf of the Polterham
Constitutional Literary Society.

The fine old crusted party had some reason for their alarm. Since
Polterham was a borough it had returned a Tory Member as a matter of
course. Political organization was quite unknown to the supporters of
Mr. Welwyn-Baker; such trouble had never seemed necessary. Through the
anxious year of 1868 Mr. Welwyn-Baker sat firm as a rock; an endeavour
to unseat him ended amid contemptuous laughter. In 1874 the high-tide
of Toryism caused only a slight increase of congratulatory gurgling in
the Polterham backwater; the triumphant party hardly cared to notice
that a Liberal candidate had scored an unprecedented proportion of
votes. Welwyn-Baker sat on, stolidly oblivious of the change that was
affecting his constituency, denying indeed the possibility of mutation
in human things. Yet even now the Literary Institute was passing into
the hands of people who aimed at making it something more than a place
where retired tradesmen could play draughts and doze over _Good Words_;
already had offensive volumes found harbourage on the shelves, and
revolutionary periodicals been introduced into the reading-room. From
time to time the _Mercury_ uttered a note of warning, of protest, but
with no echo from the respectable middle-class abodes where Polterham
Conservatism dozed in self-satisfaction. It needed another five years
of Liberal activity throughout the borough to awaken the good people
whose influence had seemed unassailable, and to set them uttering
sleepy snorts of indignation But