Speeches were made from time to time, but were lost in the general hubbub. One of the local butchers had delivered over his entire stock of entrails, skin and hoof cuttings, and old blood-puddings to the Radical cause, and Conservative Speakers were soon a sight to behold. When Reuben stood up his voice was drowned in shouts of "Ben the Gorilla! Stop the dirty animal!" while a bleeding sheep's head caught him full on the chest. Too proud to take his dismissal from the mob, he spoke unheard for five minutes, at the end of which he was silenced by half a brick, which hit his temple and stunned him sufficiently for Ditch and MacDonald to pull him away. At twelve the poll stood at a hundred and one for the Captain and sixty-five for the Colonel. The Tories were getting desperate--they threw into the crowd handbills wet from the printers, declaring that MacDonald's toll-gate should not stand an hour after he was elected. But the crowd only sang derisively: "Who fill their pockets at Scott's Float, And on their private Toll-gate doat, While o'er our hard-earned pence they gloat? The Tories." At three o'clock the poll stood at two hundred and twelve and eighty-three. Then came the close--Captain MacKinnon elected by a majority of sixty-nine. Loud cheers rose up from the struggling, drunken mass in the market-place. "Hurray for MacKinnon!--Down with the Tollkeepers!" In the Court-house the beaten Conservatives heard the shouts and turned fiercely--on one another. "It's that hemmed gëate of yourn--lost everything!" cried Reuben. "By God, it's not my gate--it's your wheat." "My wheat!--wot d'you mean, sir?" "I mean that, thanks to you, we wasted about three weeks talking to those damned fools about a matter they don't care twopence about. You worked up a false interest, and the result is, that when anything that really touches them is brought forward, the whole campaign drops to pieces." "It's unaccountable easy to put the blame on me, when it's your hemmed gëate----" "I tell you, sir, it's your damned wheat----" "And your damned son!" furiously cried Ditch of Totease. "My son!"--Reuben swung round on the men who had once rallied under his leadership, but now stood scowling at him and muttering to themselves. "My son!" "Yes," said Coalbran of Doozes, "you know as well as us as how it wur your Albert wrote them verses about the gëate, wot have bust up everything." "You're a liar!" cried Reuben. "You dare miscall me," and the two men, mad with private hate and public humiliation, flew at each other's throats. Ditch and the Colonel pulled them apart. "Hang it all, Coalbran, we don't know it's his son. But we do know it's his wheat. Good God, sir--if only you'd kept your confounded self out of politics----"