d
with that most soothing and comforting of sights to a sick man--a
nurse's uniform. She was a pleasant-faced girl, I remember, and she was
carrying a basin full of sponges and water, cruelly tinged.

"Just a peep!" she said, with that little air of motherly sternness
which all women, however young, adopt towards fractious children and
helpless males.

She closed the door very softly upon me, and left me alone.

For a moment I stood uncertain in the shadow of the screen that guarded
the door. There was a whiff of chloroform in the air, and through the
doorway leading to the room where we had sat throughout the previous
night I could see the end of a white-covered table. Thank God, that part
of the business was over!

A shaded lamp burned at Phillis's bedside. She lay deathly still, an
attenuated little derelict amid an ocean of white bed-clothes.

At first I thought I was alone with the child, and was moving softly
forward when I became suddenly aware that some one was kneeling at the
far side of the bed. It was Kitty. Evidently she had not obeyed the
doctor's orders about going to bed.

A single ray from the lamp fell upon her face. Her eyes were wide open,
and she seemed to be looking straight at me. Her lips were moving, and I
became aware that she was speaking, very earnestly and almost inaudibly.

I stood still to hear her. Then I realised that her words were not
addressed to me. Very carefully I stepped back to the door-handle,
turned it, and slipped out.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"QUI PERD, GAGNE."

Once more I was back in the thick of it all, and till the closing of the
poll at eight o'clock I strove, in company with Cash, Robin, and others,
to direct the inclinations of my constituents into the proper channels.

The tumult increased as the evening advanced. More snow had fallen
during the afternoon, and outlying electors were being conveyed to the
scene of action with the utmost difficulty. People were voting at seven
o'clock who had intended to get it done and be home by six; and as time
wore on it was seen that there would be a desperate rush of business
right up till closing time.

Every one was in high spirits. That potent factor in British politics,
the electioneering egg, had been entirely superseded by the snowball,
and the youth of Stoneleigh, massed in the public square outside the
Town Hall, were engaged, with a lofty indifference to party distinctions
that would have been sublime if i