“Here!” replied the Baronet, seizing a card-table from below the portrait of Mr. Customer getting drunk, and setting it out a little on the left of the fire. The ballot-box was then duly deposited on the centre of the green baize with a composite candle on each side of it. Sir Moses, then thinking to make up in dignity what he had sacrificed to expediency, now called upon the meeting to appoint a Scrutineer on behalf of the club, and parties caring little who they named so long as they were not kept waiting for dinner, holloaed out “Mr. Flintoff!” whereupon Sir Moses put it to them if they were all content to have Mr. Flintoff appointed to the important and responsible office of Scrutineer, and receiving a shower of “yes-es!” in reply, he declared Mr. Flintoff was duly elected, and requested him to enter upon the duties of his office. Cuddy, then turning up his red coat wrists, so that there might be no suspicion of concealed beans, proceeded to open and turn the drawers of the ballot-box upside down, in order to show that they were equally clear, and then restoring them below their “Yes” and “No” holes, he took his station behind the table with the soup-plate in his hand ready to drop a bean into each member’s hand, as he advanced to receive it. Mr. Heslop presently led the way at a dead-march-in-Saul sort of pace, and other members falling in behind like railway passengers at a pay place, there was a continuous dropping of beans for some minutes, a solemn silence being preserved as if the parties expected to hear on which side they fell. At length the constituency was exhausted, and Mr. Flintoff having assumed the sand-glass, and duly proclaimed that he should close the ballot, if no member appeared before the first glass was out, speedily declared it was run, when, laying it aside, he emptied the soup-plate of the remaining beans, and after turning it upside down to show the perfect fairness of the transaction, handed it to Sir Moses to hold for the result. Drawing out the “Yes” drawer first, he proceeded with great gravity to count the beans out into the soup-plate—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and so on, up to eighteen, when the inverted drawer proclaimed they were done. “Eighteen Ayes,” announced Sir Moses to the meeting, amid a murmur of applause. Mr. Flintoff then produced the dread “No,” or black-ball drawer, whereof one to ten white excluded, and turning it upside down, announced, in a tone of triumph, “_none!_”