winning among the electors, who were neither to be awed by distant demeanour nor to be cajoled by excessive familiarity. In Walter Joyce's pleasant bearing and cheery way there was a something which seemed to say, "I am of you, and understand you, although I may have had, perhaps, a few more brains and a little better education;" and there was nothing that more quickly got to the hearts of the Brocksoppians than the feeling that they were about to elect one of themselves. This was a chord which Mr. Creswell could never touch, although he had every claim to do so, and although Mr. Gould had had thousands of a little pamphlet struck off and circulated among the voters--a little pamphlet supposed to be Mr. Creswell's biography, adorned with woodcuts borrowed from some previous publication, the first of which represented Mr. Creswell as a cabin-boy, about to receive the punishment of the "colt" from the mate--he had scarcely been on board ship during his life--while the last showed him, and Mrs. Creswell, with short waist, long train, and high ostrich feathers in her head (supposed to have been originally the _vera_ effigies of some lady mayoress in George the Third's, time), receiving the cream of the aristocracy in a gilded saloon. But the people declined to believe in the biography, which, indeed, did rather more harm than good, and cast doubt on the real history of Mr. Creswell's self-manufacture, than which, in its way, nothing could be more creditable. Before Marian had reached her home she had revolved all these things very carefully in her mind, and the result which she arrived at was, that as it was impossible to purchase peace, and as the fight must now be fought out at all hazards, the only way--not indeed to insure success, for that was out of the question, but to stand a good chance for it--was to pay fresh and unremitting attention to the canvassing, and, above all, to try personally to enlist the sympathies of the voters, not leaving it, as in Woolgreaves it had hitherto been done, to Mr. Teesdale and his emissaries. With all her belief in money, Marian had a faith in position, which, though lately born, was springing up apace, and she felt that Squire Creswell might yet win many a vote which would be given to him out of respect to his status in the county, if he would only exert himself to obtain it.