y defiance, he
sought his pillow for a short respite before the journey that waited but
for daylight.

For a few weeks all W---- was astir with interest in the impending
election: newspaper columns teemed with caustic articles, and Huntingdon
and Aubrey clubs vilified each other with the usual acrimony of such
occasions. Mr. Campbell's influence was extensive, but the Huntingdon
supporters were powerful, and the result seemed doubtful until the week
previous to the election, when Russell, who had as yet taken no active
part, accepted the challenge of his opponent to a public discussion. The
meeting was held in front of the court-house, the massive stone steps
serving as a temporary rostrum. The night was dark and cloudy, but huge
bonfires, blazing barrels of pitch, threw a lurid glare over the broad
street, now converted into a surging sea of human heads.

Surrounded by a committee of select friends, Mr. Huntingdon sat, confident
of success; and when the hiss of rockets ceased, he came forward, and
addressed the assembly in an hour's speech. As a warm and rather prominent
politician, he was habituated to the task, and bursts of applause from his
own party frequently attested the effect of his easy, graceful style, and
pungent irony. Blinded by personal hate, and hurried on by the excitement
of the hour, he neglected the cautious policy which had hitherto been
observed, and finally launched into a fierce philippic against his
antagonist--holding up for derision the melancholy fate of his father, and
sneeringly denouncing the "audacious pretensions of a political neophyte."

Groans and hisses greeted this unexpected peroration, and many of his own
friends bit their lips, and bent their brows in angry surprise, as he took
his seat amid an uproar which would have been respectable even in the days
of the builders of Babel. Russell was sitting on the upper step, with his
head leaning on his hand, and his eyes fixed on the mass of upturned, eager
faces, listening patiently to the lengthy address, expecting just what he
was destined to hear. At the mention of his family misfortunes he lifted
his head, rose, and advancing a few steps, took off his hat, and stood
confronting the speaker in full view of the excited crowd. And there the
red light, flaring over his features, showed a calm, stern, self-reliant
man, who felt that he had nothing to blush for in the past or to dread in
future. When the tirade ended, when the tumult cea