On the whole, the campaign helped Lawyer Ed materially, in the hard days preceding the parting with his boy. After all, there was nothing so dear to his Irish heart as a fight, and the rounding up of his troops before the battle kept him busy and happy. And everything was pointing to victory. Father Tracy had promised to see to it that his flock voted the right way, and Jock McPherson had declared himself on the side of the temperance cause. Whatever Lawyer Ed may have had to do with influencing his fellow Irishmen, he could take no credit for Jock's conversion. He had set out to interview the McPherson one night after a session meeting, but fortunately J. P. Thornton prevented his impetuous friend making the mistake of approaching the elder on that difficult subject. Jock was still feeling a little dour over the temperance question and the wise Englishman knew that whichever side of the cause was presented first that was the side to which the McPherson was most likely to object. "Leave him to the other fellows, Ed," advised his friend. "They are almost certain to work their own destruction." He was right; for not a week later Lawyer Ed came up the steps of the Thornton home, staggering with laughter, to report that Jock was as staunch on the temperance question as Dr. Leslie himself, and to explain how it came about. As J. P. had prophesied, Jock had come over to their side because a particularly offensive person interested in the liquor business, had claimed him as a friend. It had happened on the Saturday afternoon before. Jock was down town, standing on the sidewalk in front of Crofter's hotel discussing the bad state of the roads with a farmer friend, when Mr. Crofter came forth, and after introducing the subject of Local Option in a friendly fashion, said: "Well, sir, I'm glad to see one good Presbyterian who hasn't gone off his head over this tom-foolery." Here he made the fatal mistake of slapping Mr. McPherson on the shoulder. "It does me good to see a man who isn't a fanatic, but can take a glass and leave it alone, and give every other fellow the same privilege." "Yus." Jock drew in his breath with a peculiar snuffing sound that would have warned any one who knew him well that there was danger in the air. "Yus," he repeated the word very slowly, "and take another glass, and leave it alone." "What did you say?" enquired Mr. Crofter, a little puzzled. "I don't think I quite caught you, Mr. McPherson." "I would be thinking," said Jock with dreadful deliberation, "that it must be a grand sight, but I nuffer saw one." "Never saw what?" "A man that could take a glass and leave it alone. He always took it." Mr. Crofter went back into the hotel with something of the feeling of a baseball player who has made a mighty swing with his bat and missed.