As the Campaign rolled on its way, the wiser Conservatives shook their heads, openly maintaining that the whole business was a direct abnegation of everything for which their party had stood in history, while the Liberals became increasingly restive: Mr. Geddes, uneasy at the inaction of the Government, Mr. Geddes truculent to meet the truculence of the enemy. The only man who openly rejoiced was Joe Burt. "The Tory Reds have lit such a candle by God's grace in England as'll never be put out," he said to Ernie. The engineer had always now a newspaper cutting in his waistcoat pocket, and a quotation pat upon his lips. "They're all shots for the locker in the only war that matters," he told the Colonel. "And they'll all coom in handy one day. A paste em into a lil book nights: _Tips for Traitors; an ammunition magazine_, A call it." For him Sir Edward Carson's famous confession of faith, _I despise the Will of the People_--words Joe had inscribed as motto on the cover of his ammunition magazine--gave the key to the whole movement. And he never met the Colonel now but he discharged a broadside into the helpless body of his victim. It was not, however, till early in 1914, just when his pursuit of Ruth was at the hottest, that he woke to the fact that the Tories were tampering with the Army. That maddened Joe. "If this goes on A shall go back to ma first love," he told Ruth with a characteristic touch of impudence. "And a good job too," she answered tartly. "I don't want you." "And you can go back to your Ernie," continued the engineer, glad to have got a rise. "I shan't go back to him," retorted Ruth, "because I never left him." The statement was not wholly true: for if Ruth had not left Ernie, since the affair of the Goffs she had according to her promise turned her back on him. When on the first opportunity that offered she had announced his fate to the offender, he had blinked, refused to understand, argued, insisted, coaxed--to no purpose. "You got to be a man afoor I marry you again," she told him coldly. "I'm no'hun of a no-man's woman." Ernie at first refused to accept defeat. He became eloquent about his rights. "They're nothing to my wrongs," Ruth answered briefly; and turned a deaf ear to all his pleas. Thereafter Ernie found himself glad to escape the home haunted by the woman he still loved, who tantalised and thwarted him. That was why when Joe girded on his armour afresh and went forth to fight the old enemy in the new disguise, Ernie accompanied him.