flaming placards, and affixed in all the
conspicuous places of the town. He had
not given consideration to this sudden
notoriety, and his first realisation of it was
in connexion with the thought of the effect
it would have on Marian, who must have
seen it; her husband must have told her of
the name of his opponent; she must have
been certain that it was not a person of
similar name, but her discarded lover
himself who was waging battle against her, and
attacking her husband in the stronghold
which he might have even considered safe.
She would know the sentiments which had
prompted him in leaving her last letter
unanswered, in taking no notice of her since
the avowal of her perfidy. Up to this time
she might have pictured him to herself as
ever bewailing her loss—as would have been
the case had she been taken from him by
death—as the prey of despair. Now she
must know him as actuated by feelings
tar stronger and sterner; he was
prepared to do battle to the death. This
feeling was pre-eminent above all others; this
desire for revenge, this delight at the
occasion which had been offered him for
lowering the pride and thwarting the designs of
the woman who had done him such great
wrong. He never faltered in his intention
for a moment; he abated his scheming not
one jot. He had some idea on the journey
down to Brocksopp that perhaps the old
reminiscences, which would naturally be
kindled by the sight of the familiar scenes
among which he would soon find himself,
and of the once familiar faces by which he
would be surrounded, would have a softening
effect on his anger, and perhaps somewhat
shake his determination. But on
experience he did not find it so. As yet he
had religiously kept away from the
neighbourhood of Helmingham; he thought it
better taste to do so, and his duties in
canvassing had not called him thither. He
had quite enough to do in calling on the
voters resident in Brocksopp.

As Walter Joyce had not been to
Helmingham, the village folk, who in their
old-fashioned way were oddly punctilious,
thought it a point of etiquette not to call
upon him, though such as were politically
of his way of thinking took care to let him
know he might reckon on their support;
and of all the people whom Walter had been
in the habit of seeing almost daily in the
village, Jack Forman, the ne'er-do-weel,
was the only one who came over expressly
to Brocksopp for the purpose of visiting
his old friend. It was not so much friendship
as constant thirst that prompted
Jack's visit; he had been in the habit of
looking on elections as institutions for the
gratuitous supply of ale and spirits, extending
more or less over the term of a month,
to all who chose to ask for them, and hitherto
he had been greatly disappointed in not
finding his name on the free list of the
Helmingham taverns. , So it was well worth
Jack's while to spend a day in staggering
over to Brocksopp, and on his arrival he met
with a very kind reception from Walter,
sufficiently kind to enable him to bear up
against the black looks and ill-suppressed
growls of Mr. South, who, in his capacity
of clerk to the magistrates, only knew Jack
as a bit of a poacher, and a great deal of a
drunkard.

Immediately on his arrival in Brocksopp,
and after one or two preliminary
interviews with Mr. South, who, as he
imagined, had forgotten all about him, and was
much struck by his knowledge of
neighbouring persons and localities, Joyce
proceeded with his canvass, and after a very
brief experience felt that Mr. Harrington
had not taken too rose-coloured a view
of his chance of success. Although to
most of the electors of Brocksopp he was
personally unknown, and though such as
remembered his father held him in recollection
only as a sour, cross-grained man, with
a leaning towards " Methodee" and a
suspicion of avarice, the fact that Walter
was not an entire stranger had great
influence with many of the electors, and his
appearance and manner won him troops of
friends. They liked his frank face and
hearty demeanour, they felt that he was
eminently " thorough," the lack of which
quality had been the chief ground of
complaint against young Bokenham, and they
delighted in his lucid argument and terse
way of laying a question before them and
driving it home to their understanding.
In this he had the advantage of his
opponent, and many waverers with undefined
political opinions who attended the public
meetings of both parties, were won over to
Joyce's side by the applause with which
his speeches were received, and by the
feeling that a man who could produce
such an effect on his hearers must
necessarily be a clever man, and the right person
to be sent by them to parliament. The
fact was allowed even by his opponents.
Mr. Teesdale wrote up to Mr. Gould that
things were anything but bright, that the
new man was amazingly popular, and quite
young, which was not a bad thing when