labourers whom the Poor Laws had crushed—a score of malcontents whose grievances long muttered in pothouses now flared to light and cried for vengeance. In a word, there were the elements of mischief in the crowd: and under the surface an ugly spirit. Even the most peaceable were grim, knowing it was now or never. So that the faces at the White Lion windows grew longer as their owners gazed and listened. “I don’t know what’s come to the people!” the Rector bawled, turning about to make himself heard by his neighbour. “Eh, what?” “I’d like to see Lord Grey hung!” answered Squire Rowley, his face purple. “And Lord Lansdowne with him! What do you say, sir?” to Sergeant Wathen. “Fortunate a show of hands don’t carry it!” the Sergeant cried, shrugging his shoulders with an assumption of easiness. “Carry it? Of course we’ll carry it!” the Squire replied wrathfully. “I suppose two and two still make four!” Isaac White, who was whispering with a man in a corner of the room, wished that he was sure of that; or, rather, that three and two made six. But the Squire was continuing. “Bah!” he cried in disgust. “Give these people votes? Look at ’em! Look at ’em, sir! Votes indeed! Votes indeed! Give ’em oakum, I say!” He forgot that nine-tenths of those below were as good as the voters at his elbow, who were presently to return two members for Chippinge. Or rather, it did not occur to him, good old Tory as he was, and convinced, _’Twas the Jacobins brought every mischief about_, that Dewell’s vote was Dewell’s, or Annibal’s Annibal’s. Meanwhile, “I wish we were safe at the hustings!” young Mowatt shouted in the ear of the man who stood in front of him. The man chanced to be Cooke, the other candidate. He turned. “At the hustings?” he said irascibly. “Do you mean, sir, that we are expected to fight our way through that rabble?” “I am afraid we must,” Mowatt answered. “Then it—has been d——d badly arranged!” retorted the outraged Cooke, who never forgot that as he paid well for his seat it ought to be a soft one. “Go through this mob, and have our heads broken?” The faces of those who could hear him grew longer. “And it wants only five minutes of ten,” complained a third. “We ought to be going now.” “D——n me, but suppose they don’t let us go!” cried Cooke. “Badly arranged! I should think it is, sir! D——d badly arranged! The hustings should have been on this side.” But hitherto the hustings had been at Chippinge a matter of form, and it had not occurred to anyone to alter their position—cheek by jowl with the Whig headquarters, but divided by seventy yards of seething mob from the White Lion. However, White, on an appeal being made to him, put a better face on the matter. “It’s all right, gentlemen,” he said, “it’s all right! If they have the hustings, we have the returning officer, and they can do nothing without us. I’ve seen Mr. Pybus, and I have his safe conduct for our party to go to the hustings.”