To lead the close of the campaign from Mr. Stephen's mansion at Bongers End was still more dangerous, from the fact that a quarrel had arisen between that gentleman and one of his workmen, whom indeed he had almost dismissed: had the tragedy actually occurred, the situation would have been not very different from the famous cause of the strike at Podger's Wharf, and the parallel was often drawn between the one case and the other in the humbler homes of Mickleton. Finally, Mr. Clutterbuck had not calculated, when he yielded to the warm pressure of his host, that his famous declaration upon total abstinence would there be taken in its literal sense. The principles of the National Party--which had now for two years advocated voluntary abstinence as an alternative to predatory legislation against the trade--forbade Mr. Clutterbuck to touch wine or spirits when he was actually present in the constituency, and he knew very well that if he were returned to the House of Commons it would be necessary for him to take his meals in the new rooms set apart for those who not only denied themselves the use of such beverages, but had the stalwart manhood to forego so much as the sight of others who were causing Israel to sin. But he would never have been able to support the fatigues of those wild days had he not carried in his pocket a flask of B.Q. cognac, and had he not been able from time to time to escape from a midday meal to his club, or better still, to some restaurant where he was unknown. He had, further, on returning to Surrey every night, freely restored his energies by vigorous draughts of port, a wine to which he had grown accustomed and whose use he could ill spare. It was, therefore, no small handicap to find continual allusion made under Mr. Stephens's roof to his valiant and thorough-going principles, nor did it help the situation to see round him every member of the household, including Mrs. Clutterbuck and his secretary, served with the most generous vintages, while he was compelled to choose milk (which he had never yet been able to digest), water, against which he had been often warned, or those aerated substitutes which his doctor had repeatedly insisted to be, in his particular case, no better than windy poisons. His vigour declined; his voice grew worse and worse; he hesitated in the midst of his speeches; he contradicted himself more than once. The first serious opposition, upon the Wednesday night, threw him into a fever of anxiety from which he had not recovered the next day. He appeared unpunctually before an impatient audience and actually forgot to appear at all at a smaller meeting later in the evening: a piece of folly that cost him fifty votes. Meanwhile the renewed energies of his opponents rendered his position less and less enviable as the day of the poll approached, although the Opposition suffered in this election, as in every other, from the very grave drawback that it had no fixed name.