them lived, and how hard it is to keep a very little home entirely clean and tidy. Dr. Stapleton one morning noticed that the people appeared to be offended with him. This vexed and made him irritable, and it must be confessed that he had not a good temper at the best of times. Just now, indeed, he was overwhelmed with troubles of which few people guessed, though some were evident enough. For one thing, a Parliamentary election was impending, and a section of the Scourby men had decided to lead the way in a new departure. There was to be a grand fight for principle. Every one said that, though exactly what the principle was remained undefined, only one thing seemed clear, that the fight would be between the classes who had property and character and those who had neither. For a change had come into the political world, although both the Government and the Opposition were slow to see it. For several years Christianity had been aggressive to an extent not previously known. The churches had become iconoclastic; they had shut up public-houses by the score; they had put gamblers into prison; they had insisted that brutal husbands and fathers should be flogged; they had suspended races, and closed music-halls, and cleared the streets of evil houses, and altogether rendered themselves so obnoxious that through the land there were risings of the dangerous classes, who were everywhere choosing men after their own hearts to represent them in Parliament. In Scourby this section of the people had chosen Mr. Richard Lavender. He was an open reviler of religion and morality, but he was bold as well as bad; he was clever at invective, and perfectly unscrupulous in his words and deeds, and therefore he was a favourite with too many of the people. They loved to hear him call names; they applauded his sneers at religion and respectability; he was no “bloated aristocrat,” he was an outcast, as many of them were, and they were going to stand by him, and send him to Westminster to be a thorn in the sides of the respectables. He appealed to the worst passions of the people, and told them that both the aristocracy and the middle classes were tyrants and oppressors of the poor; and the curious thing was that some of them seemed to believe him. He roused their antagonism by reminding them of the Bills that had been passed—that now a man could not claim his wife’s wages, or enjoy them unless she chose to give him them; that he could not send his children out to work, and, indeed, a man could no longer do what he liked with his own; besides which he did not find a public-house in every street, and often had a ten minutes’ walk before he could get his drink. The liberty of the subject was in danger, and a stop must be put to this sort of thing.