tural seat as office stools to other
mortals. He made no capital out of errantry, his temperament being far
too like his red-gold hair, which people compared to flames, consuming
all before them. His vices were patent; too incurable an optimism; an
admiration for beauty such as must sometimes have caused him to forget
which woman he was most in love with; too thin a skin; too hot a heart;
hatred of humbug, and habitual neglect of his own interest. Unmarried,
and with many friends, and many enemies, he kept his body like a
sword-blade, and his soul always at white heat.

That one who admitted to having taken part in five wars should be mixing
in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so inconsistent as might
be supposed; for he had always fought on the losing side, and there
seemed to him at the moment no side so losing as that of Peace. No great
politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet
mordancy of tongue, and the white-hot look in his eyes, never failed to
make an impression of some kind on an audience.

There was, however, hardly a corner of England where orations on behalf
of Peace had a poorer chance than the Bucklandbury division. To say that
Courtier had made himself unpopular with its matter-of-fact, independent,
stolid, yet quick-tempered population, would be inadequate. He had
outraged their beliefs, and roused the most profound suspicions. They
could not, for the life of them, make out what he was at. Though by his
adventures and his book, "Peace-a lost Cause," he was, in London, a
conspicuous figure, they had naturally never heard of him; and his
adventure to these parts seemed to them an almost ludicrous example of
pure idea poking its nose into plain facts--the idea that nations ought
to, and could live in peace being so very pure; and the fact that they
never had, so very plain!

At Monkland, which was all Court estate, there were naturally but few
supporters of Miltoun's opponent, Mr. Humphrey Chilcox, and the reception
accorded to the champion of Peace soon passed from curiosity to derision,
from derision to menace, till Courtier's attitude became so defiant, and
his sentences so heated that he was only saved from a rough handling by
the influential interposition of the vicar.

Yet when he began to address them he had felt irresistibly attracted.
They looked such capital, independent fellows. Waiting for his turn to
speak, he had marked them down as men after h