Ruxton handed him back the letter. Then he moved across to the great mullioned window and looked out upon the perfect summer night. The moon was shining at its full and not a cloud was visible anywhere. "I have some letters to write, my boy," Sir Andrew went on. "If you want me I shall be in the library. What are you going to do?" "I think I shall take a stroll along the cliffs. It'll do me good, Dad. I want to feel our beloved Yorkshire cliffs under my feet again, and make sure they're--still there." Ruxton laughed. "The General Election is on August 21st, isn't it?" his father enquired presently. "You've got seven weeks in which to recuperate, and get the cobwebs blown off you." "I always get rid of bad fancies up here in my native air," Ruxton said lightly. "I'm glad we haven't a strenuous campaign." "No. We shall win all right." "Win?" Ruxton laughed. "The National Party will sweep the polls. Labor will be opposed to us as Labor will oppose any party. They will always be with us. But even if the extreme Radicals were to link forces with them, they couldn't obtain a twenty-five per cent. representation. No, Dad, whatever the country failed to realize during the first two years of war, it's been all brought home to it now. The English housewife has been driven to a sweeping and garnishing of her home. We've driven her to that, and the National Party is--_going to see she does it thoroughly_." The younger man's enthusiasm drew an approving smile from his father. Also a world of pride in this great, fair-haired idealist shone in his eyes. "Sweep and garnish. That's it, boy," he said ardently. "And what a sweeping, what a garnishing is needed. I wonder. Can it be done?" "That is what we intend to test. It is to that great effort my colleagues have pledged their lives. I have pledged mine to another. I tell you, Dad, that the sweeping and garnishing isn't sufficient. That is only the moral side of the campaign that lies before us, and without it the other side can never be achieved. But all my future is to be given up to the material security side of the problem. It may be only my dreaming, but I seem to see a terrible threat sweeping up over the eastern horizon. A threat so appalling for us as to make the late war almost insignificant. Some day, if you have the patience to listen to a dreamer, I will tell you of the dread that persistently haunts me. Meanwhile we have that--breathing space." Without troubling himself to get a hat Ruxton Farlow passed through the entrance hall, out into the brilliant, warm summer night, and strode on towards his destiny. CHAPTER II A STRANGE MEETING The peace of the night knocked vainly at the heart of the man as he moved along over the grass-grown cart track, which skirted those fields abutting on the pathway marking the broken line of the lofty Yorkshire cliffs.