After a little more talk, Lake and the Town Clerk resumed their electioneering conference, and the lists of electors were passed under their scrutiny, name by name, like slides under the miscroscope. There is a great deal in nature, physical and moral, that had as well not be ascertained. It is better to take things on trust, with something of distance and indistinctness. What we gain in knowledge by scrutiny is sometimes paid for in a ghastly sort of disgust. It is marvellous in a small constituency of 300 average souls, what a queer moral result one of these business-like and narrow investigations which precede an election will furnish. How you find them rated and classified--what odd notes you make to them in the margin; and after the trenchant and rapid vivisection, what sinister scars and seams remain, and how gaunt and repulsive old acquaintances stand up from it. The Town Clerk knew the constituency of Dollington at his fingers' ends; and Stanley Lake quietly enjoyed, as certain minds will, the nefarious and shabby metamorphosis which every now and then some familiar and respectable burgess underwent, in the spell of half-a-dozen dry sentences whispered in his ear; and all this minute information is trustworthy and quite without malice. I went to my bed-room, and secured the door, lest Uncle Lorne, or Julius, should make me another midnight visit. So that mystery was cleared up. Neither ghost nor spectral illusion, but flesh and blood--though in my mind there has always been a horror of a madman akin to the ghostly or demoniac. I do not know how late Tom Wealdon and Stanley Lake sat up over their lists; but I dare say they were in no hurry to leave them, for a dissolution was just then expected, and no time was to be lost. When I saw Tom Wealdon alone next day in the street of Gylingden, he walked a little way with me, and, said Tom, with a grave wink-- 'Don't let the captain up there be hard on the poor old gentleman. He's quite harmless--he would not hurt a fly. I know all about him; for Jack Ford and I spent five weeks in the Hall, about twelve years ago, when the family were away and thought the keeper was not kind to him. He's quite gentle, and sometimes he'd make you die o' laughing. He fancies, you know, he's a prophet; and says he's that old Sir Lorne Brandon that shot himself in his bed-room. Well, he is a rum one; and we used to draw him out--poor Jack and me. I never laughed so much, I don't think, in the same time, before or since. But he's as innocent as a child--and you know them directions in the will is very strong; and they say Jos. Larkin does not like the captain a bit too well--and he has the will off, every word of it; and I think, if Captain Lake does not take care, he may get into trouble; and maybe it would not be amiss if you gave him a hint.' Tom Wealdon, indeed, was a good-natured fellow: and if he had had his way, I think the world would have gone smoothly enough with most people. CHAPTER XLIX.