ptain Dashmore's tight
little body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering
the shops, "intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore indignantly
declared.

These new recruits made a great difference in the musterroll of the
Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a
fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck
contest, Mr. Audley Egerton beat the captain by two votes; and the names
of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law,
Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled
in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on
the squire's estate.

These votes were unexpected; for though Mark Fairfield had come to
Lansmere on purpose to support the squire's brother, and though the
Avenels had been always stanch supporters of the Lansmere Blue interest,
yet a severe affliction (as to the nature of which, not desiring to
sadden the opening of my story, I am considerately silent) had befallen
both these persons, and they had left the town on the very day after
Lord L'Estrange and Mr. Egerton had quitted Lansmere Park.

Whatever might have been the gratification of the squire, as a canvasser
and a brother, at Mr. Egerton's triumph, it was much damped when, on
leaving the dinner given in honour of the victory at the Lansmere Arms,
and about, with no steady step, to enter a carriage which was to convey
him to his Lordship's house, a letter was put into his hands by one of
the gentlemen who had accompanied the captain to the scene of action;
and the perusal of that letter, and a few whispered words from the
bearer thereof, sent the squire back to Mrs. Hazeldean a much soberer
man than she had ventured to hope for. The fact was, that on the day of
nomination, the captain having honoured Mr. Hazeldean with many poetical
and figurative appellations,--such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin,"
"Blood-sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan,"--the squire had
retorted by a joke about "Saltwater Jack;" and the captain, who like all
satirists was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent
to be called "Salt-water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" and a "Bloodsucking
Vampire."

The letter, therefore, now conveyed to Mr. Hazeldean by a gentleman,
who, being from the Sister Country, was deemed the most fitting
accomplice in the honourable destruction of a brother mortal, contained
nothing more