f your departure from the meeting first thing to-morrow morning, and
half the wobblers in the place will vote for you out of sheer
kind-heartedness. I know 'em!"

The exemplary creature almost smacked his lips.

There was a tense silence all round the table. Then I said, with some
heat--

"Mr Cash, I have delivered myself into your hands, body and soul, ever
since Nomination Day, and I have obeyed you to the letter all through
this campaign. But--I am not going to allow a sick child's sufferings to
be employed as a political asset to-morrow."

There was a sympathetic growl from the other two.

"Oh, we shouldn't do it as publicly as all that," said the unabashed
Cash. "Trust me! No ostentation; just an explanatory report circulated
in a subdued sort of way--and perhaps a strip of tan-bark down on the
road outside the hotel--eh? _I_ know how to do it. It'll pay, I tell
you. And there'll be no publicity----"

I laid my head upon the table and groaned. For three weeks I had had
perhaps four hours' sleep a-night, and I had been worked down to my last
reserve of energy, keeping in hand just enough to meet all the probable
contingencies of to-morrow's election. Dialectics with Cash as to the
market value of a little girl's illness had not been included in the
estimate. I groaned.

Champion answered for me.

"Mr Cash, don't you see how painful these proposals are to Mr
Inglethwaite? Put such ideas out of your head once and for all. No man
worthy of the name would accept votes won in such a way."

There was a confirmatory rumble from Robin.

"We can't have _ad misericordiam_ appeals here, Mr Cash," he said.

Champion continued briskly--

"Now, Mr Cash, we will get Mr Inglethwaite a drink and send him to bed.
He has not had a decent night's rest for a fortnight. We trust to you
not to talk of the child's illness to anybody,--that is the _only_ way
to avoid making capital of it,--and if you will call here to-morrow
after breakfast I will guarantee that your Candidate will be fit and
ready to go round the polling-booths with you, and"--he put his hand on
my shoulder--"set an example to all of us."

Cash, completely pulverised, departed as bidden, desolated over this
renunciation of eleemosynary votes; and Robin, Champion, and I finished
our supper in peace,--if one can call it peace when there is no peace.

Champion was leaving by the night mail, for he had promised to address a
meeting two hundred miles away next