Mr. Teesdale was scarcely less upset.
He talked vaguely of getting Mr. Creswell's
consent, so soon as he was sufficiently
recovered to be able to entertain the topic,
to the substitution of some good Conservative
candidate in his place; but Mr. Gould
treated this proposition with a scornful
laugh, and told him that they would have
had to do all they knew to pull Mr. Creswell
through, and that to attempt to run
anybody else at that late period would be
madness. So a private meeting of the
principal supporters of the party was held
at the Lion, and Mr. Gould—who had run
up to London in the interim, and had an
interview with the chief wire-pullers—
announced that in consequence of Mr.
Creswell's unfortunate illness, it had been
decided to withdraw him from the
candidature, and, as there was no prospect
of success for any one else who might be
started in the same interest, to refrain from
contesting the borough at this election. This
announcement was received in dead silence,
broken by Mr. Croke's frank and outspoken
denunciation of the cowardice, the
"trem'lousness," the " not to put too foin a pint
upon it, the funk" which seemed to have
seized upon some as " owt t' knaw better!"
The meeting was held in the evening, most
of the company present had steaming
glasses of grog before them, and Mr.
Croke's outspoken oratory elicited a vast
amount of applause and knocking on the
tables with the stalwart feet of the tumblers.
A young farmer of the neighbourhood,
popular from his openhandedness
and his skill in rifle-shooting—he was
champion badge-holder in the local volunteers—rose and suggested that any such abject surrender as that proposed was ill-
advised and inexpedient, and sat down,
after finishing a long rambling speech, the
purport of which was that some one should
be put forward to fill the gap created by Mr.
Creswell's lamented but unavoidable illness.
That the gap should be filled, seemed to be
a popular idea; but each of the ten or
twelve speakers who subsequently
addressed the meeting had different people
for the post: and it was not until Mr.
Teesdale pointed out the utter futility of
attempting to begin the fight anew under a
fresh banner, confessing that they would
have had very great difficulty in bringing
matters to a successful issue even with all
the prestige of Mr. Creswell's name and
position, that it seemed to dawn upon the
meeting that their chance was hopeless.
This had been told them at the outset by
Mr. Gould; but he was from London, and,
consequently, in the ideas of the farmers
present, steeped in duplicity of every kind,
and labouring under an impossibility of
truth-speaking. Mr. Teesdale had infinitely
more weight with his audience. They knew
him as a man whose word was to be
relied on, and the impossibility of doing
anything beyond swallowing the bitter
pill was acknowledged among them from
that moment. True, that the pill was so
bitter as to require the consumption of an
extraordinary amount of brandy-and-water
to get it down, a fact which helped to
console old Tilley, the landlord, for the
shock to his political principles. It is to
be noted, also, that after the withdrawal of
Messrs. Gould and Teesdale, the meeting
gave itself up to harmony of a lugubrious
character, and dismal ditties, mixed with
fierce denunciations of democrats and
reformers, were borne away on the still night
air.

So, within a day or two, the walls of
Brocksopp were covered with placards
signed in Mr. Creswell's name, setting
forth the sad cause which prevented him
from further exertion in the interests of
freedom and purity of election, lamenting
the impossibility of being able conscientiously
to recommend a proper candidate
to the constituency at so short a notice, but
bidding the electors not to despair so long
as there remained to them a House of
Lords and an omniscient aristocracy. This
document, which was the production of
Mr. Teesdale (Mr. Gould had been called
away to superintend certain other strongholds
where the fortifications showed signs
of crumbling), was supplemented by the
copy of a medical certificate from Dr.
Osborne, which stated that Mr. Creswell's
condition was such as to imperatively
demand the utmost quietude, and that any
such excitement as that to be caused by
entering on an election contest would
probably cost him his life.

The news was already known at the
enemy's head-quarters. On the morning
after the meeting at the Lion, Mr. Harrington,
who had been duly informed of all that
had taken place by a spy in whom he could
place implicit confidence, walked over to
Shuttleworth, the nearest telegraphic station,
and thence despatched the following
enigmatic message to his firm  " Brocksopp
Stakes. Old Horse broken down in training.
Our Colt will walk over." It happened
that Mr. Potter was alone when this telegram
arrived, and to him it was utterly