She turned away with a wide gesture and an upward inflexion of her voice. Barney Bill refilled his pipe and fixed Paul with his twinkling diamond eyes. "It's a pity, sonny--a dodgasted pity!" "We're up against the Truth, old man, the unashamed and naked truth," said Paul, with a sigh. Jane caught Paul's fur-lined coat and hat from the chair on which he had thrown it and came to him. "It's time for you to go and rest, dear. We're all of us exhausted." She helped him on with the heavy coat, and for farewell put both her hands on his shoulders. "You must forget a lot of things I've said to-night." "I can't help remembering them." "No, dear. Forget them." She drew his face down and kissed him on the lips. Then she led him out to the front door and accompanied him down the steps to the kerb where the car with its weary chauffeur was waiting. The night had cleared and the stars shone bright in the sky. She pointed to one, haphazard. "Your star, Paul. Believe in it still." He drove off. She entered the house, and, flinging herself on the floor by Barney Bill, buried her head on the old man's knees and sobbed her brave heart out. CHAPTER XXII THE next morning amazement fluttered over a million breakfast tables and throbbed in a million railway carriages. For all the fierceness of political passions, parliamentary elections are but sombre occurrences to the general public. Rarely are they attended by the picturesque, the dramatic, the tragic. But already the dramatic had touched the election of Hickney Heath, stimulating interest in the result. Thousands, usually apathetic as to political matters, opened their newspapers to see how the ex-convict candidate had fared. They read, with a gasp, that he was dead; that his successful opponent had proclaimed himself to be his son. They had the dramatic value of cumulative effect. If Paul had ever sought notoriety he had it now. His name rang through the length and breadth of the land. The early editions of the London afternoon papers swelled the chorus of amazed comment and conjecture. Some had even routed out a fact or two, Heaven knows whence, concerning father and son. According to party they meted out praise or blame. Some, unversed in the law, declared the election invalid. The point was discussed in a hundred clubs.