t individual turned and beheld
his pursuer with a stare.

"Could I have a word with you, sir?" asked Horne Fisher, politely.
The agent stared still more, but assented civilly, and led the other
into an office littered with leaflets and hung all round with highly
colored posters which linked the name of Hughes with all the higher
interests of humanity.

"Mr. Horne Fisher, I believe," said Mr. Gryce. "Much honored by the
call, of course. Can't pretend to congratulate you on entering the
contest, I'm afraid; you won't expect that. Here we've been keeping
the old flag flying for freedom and reform, and you come in and
break the battle line."

For Mr. Elijah Gryce abounded in military metaphors and in
denunciations of militarism. He was a square-jawed, blunt-featured
man with a pugnacious cock of the eyebrow. He had been pickled in
the politics of that countryside from boyhood, he knew everybody's
secrets, and electioneering was the romance of his life.

"I suppose you think I'm devoured with ambition," said Horne Fisher,
in his rather listless voice, "aiming at a dictatorship and all
that. Well, I think I can clear myself of the charge of mere selfish
ambition. I only want certain things done. I don't want to do them.
I very seldom want to do anything. And I've come here to say that
I'm quite willing to retire from the contest if you can convince me
that we really want to do the same thing."

The agent of the Reform party looked at him with an odd and slightly
puzzled expression, and before he could reply, Fisher went on in the
same level tones:

"You'd hardly believe it, but I keep a conscience concealed about
me; and I am in doubt about several things. For instance, we both
want to turn Verner out of Parliament, but what weapon are we to
use? I've heard a lot of gossip against him, but is it right to act
on mere gossip? Just as I want to be fair to you, so I want to be
fair to him. If some of the things I've heard are true he ought to
be turned out of Parliament and every other club in London. But I
don't want to turn him out of Parliament if they aren't true."

At this point the light of battle sprang into Mr. Gryce's eyes and
he became voluble, not to say violent. He, at any rate, had no doubt
that the stories were true; he could testify, to his own knowledge,
that they were true. Verner was not only a hard landlord, but a mean
landlord, a robber as well as a rackrenter; any gentleman would be
justified in ho