 I have entertained the highest respect."

It was the first public recognition of the position which for some time had been tacitly given to John Halifax in his own neighbourhood. Coming thus, from this upright and honourable old man, whose least merit it was to hold, and worthily, a baronetage centuries old, it made John's cheek glow with an honest gratification and a pardonable pride.

"Tell her," he said to me, when, the meeting having dispersed, he asked me to ride home and explain the reason of his detention at Kingswell—"Tell my wife all. She will be pleased, you know."

Ay, she was. Her face glowed and brightened as only a wife's can—a wife whose dearest pride is in her husband's honour.

Nevertheless, she hurried me back again as quickly as I came.

As I once more rode up Kingswell Hill, it seemed as if the whole parish were agog to see the novel sight. A contested election! truly, such a thing had not been known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The fifteen voters—I believe that was the number—were altogether bewildered by a sense of their own importance. Also, by a new and startling fact—which I found Mr. Halifax trying to impress upon a few of them, gathered under the great yew-tree in the churchyard—that a man's vote ought to be the expression of his own conscientious opinion; and that for him to sell it was scarcely less vile than to traffic in the liberty of his son or the honour of his daughter. Among those who listened most earnestly, was a man whom I had seen before to-day—Jacob Baines, once the ringleader of the bread-riots, who had long worked steadily in the tan-yard, and then at the flour-mill. He was the honestest and faithfulest of all John's people—illustrating unconsciously that Divine doctrine, that often they love most to whom most has been forgiven.

The poll was to be held in the church—a not uncommon usage in country boroughs, but which from its rarity struck great awe into the Kingswell folk. The churchwarden was placed in the clerk's desk to receive votes. Not far off, the sheriff sat in his family-pew, bare-headed; by his grave and reverent manner imposing due decorum, which was carefully observed by all except Lord Luxmore and Mr. Brithwood.

These two, apparently sure of their cause, had recovered their spirits, and talked and laughed loudly on the other side of the church. It was a very small building, narrow and
