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On the night of the polling-day Captain Le Mesurier brought his house-party into Bentbridge to dine with Drake, and after dinner the ladies remained in the room overlooking the street, while the gentlemen repaired to the Town Hall, where the votes were being counted. It seemed to Clarice as she gazed down that all the seven thousand electors had gathered to hear the result announced.

A week's electioneering proved sufficient for their requirements; and, declining flatly to "grin like a dog and run about the city" Dilly's pithy summary of the art of canvassing any longer, they left us ten days before polling-day to pay a country-house visit. But Robin was everywhere. He answered my letters and he interviewed reporters.

An hour before the close of the poll I saw, with the unnatural clearness of polling-day fatigue, a large white face at the window of the ward committee-room, while a hoarse voice roared: 'Where's your bloody pigtail? We cut it off last time: and now we'll put it round your bloody neck and strangle you.

Politics sets the humblest at the centre of great cross-roads of history: it promotes clubs and all manner of fellowship, and enables the poorest on polling-day at least to know himself the equal of the greatest. Even the most illiterate is spared the mortification of being reminded that he cannot sign his name. And finally, and most of all, it preserves among us the lost art of fighting.

I saw Cecilia Spence in town. She was at Maundrell Abbey with them both last week. You may expect the announcement any day she'll write it herself for the Morning Post. How on earth can Jack find time to think about women with the immense amount of work he gets through? and his really immodest ambitions! By-the-way isn't this polling-day? I wonder if he has won his seat?

If there was one town in the country where this enthusiasm ran higher than in any other, it was Leeds. We had no reason, therefore, to fear the taunts of our opponents. We knew that we were being swept on an irresistible current to an assured victory. On the Saturday before the polling-day a great meeting was held in the Albert Hall, presided over by Kitson.

But he had stumped his desired constituency thoroughly, making speeches at every street corner and at every public meeting-place, and he had a personal conviction from his usual reception on these occasions that the people were with him. He was still sure of victory when, at noon on the polling-day, he chanced to meet Tansley.

Chance, and even ill-luck, formed a part of his strategy; the sore throat of an eloquent speaker; the illness of a popular candidate; a storm on polling-day all were to him factors in the problem.

Goosey-gander knight! Gander-goosey lady! I smiled again, for in my pocket was a letter that morning received from the former himself, stating that he had been booked for a trip to the St Louis Exposition, but had flung it up at the last moment in favour of seeing how Les. got on at the election, and that he would be back in Noonoon before polling-day.

"But don't you feel it humiliating to see your carter and your cowman and your shepherd boy all go up to Rye to vote on polling-day, while you, who own this farm, and have such a stake in the country, aren't allowed to do so?" "It only means as I've got eight votes instead of one," said Joanna, "and don't have the trouble of going to the poll, neither.