Generally popular in the county as he was, there were yet some by whom Captain Bradshaw was looked upon with an eye of extraordinary disfavour. Foremost among them was the Earl of Longdale, the patron, and, as he considered, the owner of the little borough of Longdale, which had been an hereditary appanage of his family from time immemorial. Very aggrieved and highly indignant therefore was he when Harry Bradshaw—whose estate adjoined the earl’s, and who had had a dispute with his lordship respecting the right of shooting over a small piece of waste land which lay wedged in between the properties—brought down from London an unknown barrister of Conservative opinions, and at every election contested the borough with his lordship’s Whig nominee. His candidate never polled a dozen votes certainly, for as nearly the whole property belonged to the earl, and none of his tenants dared to record their votes against him, it was a hopeless struggle; still, it was none the less provoking to the earl to read, in the county papers, the fulminations against himself with which Harry Bradshaw wound up his speeches on proposing his candidate, or to hear of the cheers with which these orations had been greeted. For if his lordship’s tenants were compelled to vote one way, they considered that they had at least the right to shout as they pleased. And Harry Bradshaw’s speeches were exactly of the sort to carry an audience away with him,—full of biting truths, interspersed with humorous appeals and broad fun, dashed here and there with bitter personal invectives, and spoken with a thorough enjoyment and zest, and an earnest conviction of truth and right. But the great climax of Harry Bradshaw’s offences was when the earl shut up a public footpath leading across a pretty corner of his park. The town of Longdale, although indignant at losing its prettiest walk, would yet have sullenly acquiesced in it, had not Harry Bradshaw taken the matter up, and with some of his labourers levelled the barrier which had been erected. He then at his own expense fought the case from court to court, until at last the right of the public to the walk was triumphantly established, and the earl’s pet project defeated. Captain Bradshaw had two sisters, both very much younger than himself. The eldest, Alice, after she came of age, when on a visit to some friend in London, met and fell in love with Richard Bingham, a young civil engineer.