Cambridge: after a lengthened interview with the head-master, the Rev. Dr. Barker, Mr. Simnel gracefully resigned the exhibition in favour of Swetter, _major_, who "proxime accessit," and entered as the articled clerk of Messrs. Banner and Blair, accounted the sharpest lawyers in Combcardingham, and known through all the county as great electioneering agents for the Liberal party. A few years passed on; Mr. Simnel had finished his articles had become the junior partner of Messrs. Banner and Blair, and was working steadily and well, when an event happened which insured his success for life. It was this: Combcardingham, for the three last general elections, had returned the same two members--Sir Thomas Prodd and Mr. Shuttler; both local magnates, employing hundreds of hands, supporting local charities, known throughout the county, and Liberal to the backbone. One morning news sped to London that Mr. Shuttler was dead; and that evening a tall, thin gentleman, with a hare-lip, arrived by afternoon express in Combcardingham, and engaged the Waterloo Hotel as the head-quarters of Mr. Farquhar, the Conservative candidate. Blue bills on a dead-wall unpleasantly proclaimed this fact to M. Simnel as he was shaving himself the next morning; and he perceived that young Woofham, the hope of the Liberal party, would not be brought in without a struggle. So he, metaphorically, took off his coat and set to work; canvassed, intrigued, cajoled, went through all the dirty round of electioneering tactics, but found he did not make much way; found, in truth, that the hare-lipped man seemed to have Fortunatus's purse somewhere about him, and that young Woofham was a miserly young hunks, who did not see the borough as a proper investment for his ingots. What was to be done? To lose the borough would be a tremendous blow to the Government, who had always looked upon it as their own, and to whom it was always supposed to owe allegiance. But the money? The night before the nomination, Mr. Simnel, with his face muffled in a huge handkerchief, despatched the following telegraphic message to Mr. Weal, the Government whip, at the Retrenchment Club: "No. 104 is putting on the steam at Combcardingham. If No. 102 does not do likewise, up goes the sponge." While No. 102 Mall-Pall is the Retrenchment Club, No. 104 is, it is needless to say, the No Surrender (familiarly known as the Wig and Whiskers), the head-quarters of the Conservative party. By the early morning express a messenger, with a letter from Mr. Weal, arrived at Mr. Simnel's office, and during the day the doubts under which many of the electors suffered were satisfactorily explained away, and at the close of the poll Mr. Woofham's name stood well ahead of his rival. Mr. Weal and his party did not forget their telegraphing friend at Combcardingham. After the election was over, Mr. Simnel was summoned to London, had an interview with certain of the _Dii majors_, and at the end of six months was