Dry arguments nowadays; but in those days alive, and to the party on its defence—the party which found itself thrust against the wall, that its pockets might be emptied—of vital interest. From scores of platforms candidates, leaning forward, bland and smiling, with one hand under the coat-tails and the other gently pumping, pumping, pumping, enunciated them—old hands these; or, red in the face, thundered them, striking fist into palm and overawing opposition; or, hopeless amid the rain of dead cats and stale eggs, muttered them in a reporter’s ear, since the hootings of the crowd made other utterance impossible. But ever as the contest went on, the smiling candidate grew rarer; for day by day the Tories, seeing their cause hopeless, seeing even Whigs, such as Sir Thomas Acland in Devonshire and Mr. Wilson Patten in Lancashire, cast out if they were lukewarm, grew more desperate, cried more loudly on high heaven, asserted more frantically that justice was dead on the earth. All this, while those who believed that the Bill was going to give everything to everybody pushed their advantage without mercy. Many a borough which had not known a contest for a generation, many a county, was fought and captured. No Tory felt safe; no bargain, though signed and sealed, held good; no patron, though he had held his income from his borough as secure as any part of his property, could say that his voters would dare to go to the poll. This last was the apprehension in the mind of Isaac White, Sir Robert Vermuyden’s agent, as on the day after Lady Lansdowne’s visit he drove his gig and fast-trotting cob up the avenue. The treble front of the house looked down on him from its gentle eminence; its windows blinked in the afternoon sunshine, and the mellow tints of the stone harmonised with the russet bloom which in April garbs the poplar and the later-bursting trees. Tradition said that the second baronet had built a wing for each of his two sons. After the death of the elder, however, the east wing had been devoted to kitchens and offices, and the west to a splendid hospitality. In these days the latter wing was so seldom used that it had almost fallen into decay. Laurels grew up before the side windows and darkened them, and bats lived in the dry chimneys. The rooms above stairs were packed with the lumber of the last century, with the old wig-boxes, the old travelling-trunks, the old harpsichords, even an old sedan chair; while the lower rooms, swept and bare, and hung with flat, hard portraits, enjoyed an evil reputation in the servants’ quarters, where many a one could tell of skirts that rustled unseen, and dead feet that trod the polished floors.