nciling efforts, so the poor girl, torn between common
sense and feeling, and recognizing with painful clearness the complexity
of life, found refuge in secret tears.

III

The honours of the contest, so far as Lewis's party was concerned, fell
to George Winterham, and this was the fashion of the event. He had been
dragged reluctantly into the thing, foreseeing dire disaster for
himself, for he knew little and cared less about matters political,
though he was ready enough at a pinch to place his ignorance at his
friend's disposal. So he had been set to the dreary work of
committee-rooms; and then, since his manners were not unpleasing,
dispatched as aide-de-camp to any chance orator who enlivened the
county. But at last a crisis arrived in which other use was made of
him. A speaker of some pretensions had been announced for a certain
night at the considerable village of Allerfoot. The great man failed,
and as it was the very eve of the election none could be found for his
place. Lewis was in despair, till he thought of George. It was a
desperate chance, but the necessity was urgent, so, shutting himself up
for an hour, he wrote the better part of a speech which he entrusted to
his friend to prepare. George, having a good memory, laboriously
learned it by heart, and clutching the friendly paper and
whole-heartedly abusing his chief, he set out grimly to his fate.

Promptly at the hour of eight he was deposited at the door of the
Masonic Hail in Allerfoot. The place seemed full, and a nervous
chairman was hovering around the gate. News of the great man's
defection had already been received, and he was in the extremes of
nervousness. He greeted George as a saviour, and led him inside, where
some three hundred people crowded a small whitewashed building. The
village of Allerfoot itself is a little place, but it is the centre of a
wide pastoral district, and the folk assembled were brown-faced herds
and keepers from the hills, plough-men from the flats of Glen Aller, a
few fishermen from the near sea-coast, as well as the normal inhabitants
of the village.

George was wretchedly nervous and sat in a cold sweat while the chairman
explained that the great Mr. S---- deeply regretted that at the last
moment he was unfortunately compelled to break so important an
engagement, but that he had sent in his stead Mr. George Winterham,
whose name was well known as a distinguished Oxford scholar and a rising
barrister. George, who