the grand old flag----"

"Tommy, shut up!"

"I was about to say, they can vote as they darned well please, and the
same will be mostly the way they've voted every election the last
fifteen years--except in Mid-Toronto."

"Are you through?"

"Well, that's all I can think of just now."

"But what's the use? You haven't got the shadow of a chance. Why, the
government 'll be returned hands down."

"Sure; but 'The Big Wind' won't. He'll be returned sky high. Don't
you forget it. Why, Mid-Toronto's just seething, Whimple--just
seething. Every patriotic soul in the riding is repeating that
well-known verse from Bill Shakespeare's 'Saturday Night in London':--

'Breathes there a man with soul so punk,
Who never to himself has thunk,
By hedges and by hook or crook,
We'll surely give Big Wind the Hook.'"

"Shakespeare! Shakespeare! Are you sure, Tommy?"

"Well, perhaps it wasn't him; but he's as good as any to tack it to."

"But, Tommy--seriously, is Jimmy Duggan going to fight?"

"Fight!--you bet your life he's going to fight, and he's going to win,
too."

"Umph!"

"Umph again, Whimple, you and the government will be umphing to the
finish, and then you'll umph some more."

"But look here, Tommy, you know the opposition and its press has had
the government tottering to its fall every election these fifteen
years, and it's as solid as ever."

"Well, we'll make a dint in its solidity any way. You keep your eyes
on Jimmy Duggan."

And Whimple did; others were a little slower to turn their gaze in that
direction. They treated Duggan and the People's Party as a joke until
the official nomination meeting when the strength and enthusiasm of
Jimmy's supporters jolted them. There was a hurried consultation
thereafter in the government's campaign quarters. Cabinet ministers
were turned loose in the riding; the city papers supporting the
government, though loth to do it, began to play up "The Big Wind."
Every hall in the riding was hired for every night of the remaining
week of the campaign, and two or three meetings were held every night.
The People's Party and Jimmy Duggan could not afford to rent halls;
their material platforms were express and coal delivery wagons drawn up
on vacant lots: their speakers, outside of Tommy Watson, were men who
laboured in the factories and workshops, or, like William Turnpike's Pa
and Jimmy Duggan himself; had little businesses of their own. Jimmy
could talk-