"For several reasons, I must beg you to come to me." "Oh, very good. I'll walk out and see you this evening, if possible. I shall have much pleasure in being of any use to you." Jermyn felt that in the eyes of Harold he was appearing all the more valuable when his services were thus in request. He went out, and Mr. Lyon easily relapsed into politics, for he had been on the brink of a favorite subject on which he was at issue with his fellow-Liberals.

At that time, when faith in the efficacy of political change was at fever heat in ardent Reformers, many measures which men are still discussing with little confidence on either side, were then talked about and disposed of like property in near reversion. Crying abuses-" bloated paupers," "bloated pluralists," and other corruptions, hindering men from being wise and happy-had to be fought against and slain. Such a time is a time of hope. Afterward, when the corpses of those monsters have been held up to the public wonder and abhorrence, and yet wisdom and happiness do not follow, but rather a more abundant breeding of the foolish and unhappy, comes a time of doubt and despondency. But in the great Reform-year hope was mighty: the prospect of Reform had even served the voters instead of drink; and in one place, at least, there had been a "dry election." And now the speakers at Reform banquets were exuberant in congratulation and promise: Liberal clergymen of the Establishment toasted Liberal Catholic clergymen without any allusion to scarlet, and Catholic clergymen replied with a like tender reserve. Some dwelt on the abolition of all abuses, and on millennial blessedness generally; others, whose imaginations were less suffused with exhalations of the dawn, insisted chiefly on the ballot-box.

Now on this question of the ballot the minister strongly took the negative side. Our pet opinions are usually those which place us in a minority of a minority among our own party very happily, else those poor opinions, born with no

silver spoon in their mouths-how would they get nourished and fed? So it was with Mr. Lyon and his objection to the ballot. But he had thrown out a remark on the subject which was not quite clear to his hearer, who interpreted it according to his best calculation of probabilities. "I have no objection to the ballot," said Harold, “but I think that is not the sort of thing we have to work at just now. We shouldn't get it. And other questions are imminent."

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"Then, sir, you would vote for the ballot ?" said Mr. Lyon, stroking his chin.

"Certainly, if the point came up. I have too much respect for the freedom of the voter to oppose any thing which offers a chance of making that freedom more complete."

'

Mr. Lyon looked at the speaker with a pitying smile and a subdued "H’m-m-m,” which Harold took for a sign of satisfaction. He was soon undeceived.

.

"You grieve me, sir; you grieve me much. And I pray you to reconsider this question, for it will take you to the root, as I think, of political morality. I engage to show to any impartial mind, duly furnished with the principles of public and private rectitude, that the ballot would be pernicious, and that if it were not pernicious it would still be futile. I will show, first, that it would be futile as a preservative from bribery and illegitimate influence; and, secondly, that it would be in the worst kind pernicious, as shutting the door against those influences whereby the soul of a man and the character of a citizen are duly educated for their great functions. Be not alarmed if I detain you, sir. It is well worth the while."

"I'll never

"Confound this old man," thought Harold. make a canvassing call on a preacher again, unless he has lost his voice from a cold." He was going to excuse himself as prudently as he could, by deferring the subject till the morrow, and inviting Mr. Lyon to come to him in the committee-room before the time appointed for his public

speech; but he was relieved by the opening of the door. Lyddy put in her head to say,

"If you please, sir, here's Mr. Holt wants to know if he may come in and speak to the gentleman. He begs your pardon, but you're to say 'no' if you don't like him to come."

"Nay, show him in at once, Lyddy. A young man," Mr. Lyon went on, speaking to Harold, "whom a representative ought to know-no voter, but a man of ideas and study."

"He is thoroughly welcome," said Harold, truthfully enough, though he felt little interest in the voteless man of ideas except as a diversion from the subject of the ballot. He had been standing for the last minute or two, feeling less of a victim in that attitude, and more able to calculate on means of escape.

"Mr. Holt, sir,” said the minister, as Felix entered, "is a young friend of mine, whose opinions on some points I hope to see altered, but who has a zeal for public justice which I trust he will never lose."

"I am glad to see Mr. Holt," said Harold, bowing. He perceived from the way in which Felix bowed to him and turned to the most distant spot in the room, that the candidate's shake of the hand would not be welcome here. "A formidable fellow," he thought, "capable of mounting a cart in the market-place to-morrow and cross-examining me, if I say any thing that doesn't please him."

"Mr. Lyon," said Felix, "I have taken a liberty with you in asking to see Mr. Transome when he is engaged with you. But I have to speak to him on a matter which I shouldn't care to make public at present, and it is one on which I am sure you will back me. I heard that Mr. Transome was here, so I ventured to come. I hope you will both excuse me, as my business refers to some electioneering measures which are being taken by Mr. Transome's agents."

"Pray go on," said Harold, expecting something unpleasant.

"I'm not going to speak against treating voters," said Felix; "I suppose buttered ale, and grease of that sort to make the wheels go, belong to the necessary humbug of Representation. But I wish to ask you, Mr. Transome, whether it is with your knowledge that agents of yours are bribing rough fellows who are no voters-the colliers and navvies at Sproxton-with the chance of extra drunkenness, that they may make a posse on your side at the nomination and polling ?"

"Certainly not," said Harold. "You are aware, my dear sir, that a candidate is very much at the mercy of his agents as to the means by which he is returned, especially when many years' absence has made him a stranger to the men actually conducting business. But are you sure of your facts ?"

"As sure as my senses can make me," said Felix, who then briefly described what had happened on Sunday. "I believed that you were ignorant of all this, Mr. Transome," he added, "and that was why I thought some good might be done by speaking to you. If not, I should be tempted to expose the whole affair as a disgrace to the Radical party. I'm a Radical myself, and mean to work all my life long against privilege, monopoly, and oppression. But I would rather be a livery-servant, proud of my master's title, than I would seem to make common cause with scoundrels who turn the best hopes for men into by-words for cant and dishonesty."

"Your energetic protest is needless here, sir," said Harold, offended at what sounded like a threat, and was certainly premature enough to be in bad taste. In fact, this error of behavior in Felix proceeded from a repulsion which was mutual. It was a constant source of irritation to him that the public men on his side were, on the whole, not conspicuously better than the public men on the other side; that the spirit of innovation, which with him was a part of religion, was in many of its mouth-pieces no more of a religion than the faith in rotten boroughs; and he was

thus predisposed to distrust Harold Transome. Harold, in his turn, disliked impracticable notions of loftiness and purity-disliked all enthusiasm; and he thought he saw a very troublesome, vigorous incorporation of that nonsense in Felix. But it would be foolish to exasperate him in any way.

"If you choose to accompany me to Jermyn's office," he went on, "the matter shall be inquired into in your presence. I think you will agree with me, Mr. Lyon, that this will be the most satisfactory course."

"Doubtless," said the minister, who liked the candidate very well, and believed that he would be amenable to argument; "and I would caution my young friend against a too great hastiness of words and action. David's cause against Saul was a righteous one; nevertheless, not all who clave unto David were righteous men."

"The more was the pity, sir," said Felix. if he winked at their malpractices."

"Especially

Mr. Lyon smiled, shook his head, and stroked his favorite's arm deprecatingly.

"It is rather too much for any man to keep the consciences of all his party," said Harold. "If you had lived in the East, as I have, you would be more tolerant. More tolerant, for example, of an active industrious selfishness, such as we have here, though it may not always be quite scrupulous; you would see how much better it is than an idle selfishness. I have heard it said, a bridge is a good thing-worth helping to make, though half the men who worked at it were rogues."

"Oh yes!" said Felix, scornfully; "give me a handful of generalities and analogies, and I'll undertake to justify Burke and Hare, and prove them benefactors of their species. I'll tolerate no nuisances but such as I can't help; and the question now is, not whether we can do away with all the nuisances in the world, but with a particular nuisance under our noses."

"Then we had better cut the matter short, as I propose,