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 ended, »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 of 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 behaviour 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