most loved and admired,--of men who had dared to be independent, patriotic, and philanthropical, through all the temptations of political life. Would he be too vain if he thought to rival a Hume or a Cobden? Conceit, he said to himself, will seek to justify itself. Who can rise but those who believe their wings strong enough for soaring? There might be shipwreck of course,--but he believed that he now saw his way. As to the difficulty of speaking in public,--that he had altogether overcome. Some further education as to facts, historical and political, might be necessary. That he acknowledged to himself;--but he would not spare himself in his efforts to acquire such education. He went pacing through the damp, muddy, dark streets, making speeches that were deliciously eloquent to his own ears. That night he was certainly the happiest man in Percycross, never doubting his success on the morrow,--not questioning that. Had not the whole town greeted him with loudest acclamation as their chosen member? He was deliciously happy;--while poor Sir Thomas was suffering the double pain of his broken arm and his dissipated hopes, and Griffenbottom was lying in his bed, with a doctor on one side and a nurse on the other, hardly able to restrain himself from cursing all the world in his agony. At a little after eleven a tall man, buttoned up to his chin in an old great coat, called at the Percy Standard, and asked after the health of Mr. Griffenbottom and Sir Thomas. "They ain't neither of them very well then," replied the waiter. "Will you say that Mr. Moggs called to inquire, with his compliments," said the tall man. The respect shown to him was immediately visible. Even the waiter at the Percy Standard acknowledged that for that day Mr. Moggs must be treated as a great man in Percycross. After that Moggs walked home and crept into bed;--but it may be doubted whether he slept a wink that night. And then there came the real day,--the day of the election. It was a foul, rainy, muddy, sloppy morning, without a glimmer of sun, with that thick, pervading, melancholy atmosphere which forces for the time upon imaginative men a conviction that nothing is worth anything. Griffenbottom was in bed in one room at the Percy Standard, and Underwood in the next. The three conservative doctors moving from one chamber to another, watching each other closely, and hardly leaving the hotel, had a good time of it. Mr. Trigger had already remarked that in one respect the breaking of Sir Thomas's arm was lucky, because now there would be no difficulty as to paying the doctors out of the common fund. Every half-hour the state of the poll was brought to them. Early in the morning Moggs had been in the ascendant. At half-past nine the numbers were as follows:-- Moggs 193 Westmacott 172 Griffenbottom 162 Underwood 147