hom
the fire was hot.

"Most disappointing--all through!" said McEwart, with emphasis. "The
facts wrongly chosen--the argument absurd. It'll take all the heart out
of our fellows in the country."

Marsham looked up.

"Well, it isn't for want of pressure. Ferrier's life hasn't been worth
living this last month."

The tone was ambiguous. It fitted either with defence or indictment.

The London member--Roland Lankester, who was a friend of Marion Vincent,
and of Frobisher, represented an East End constituency, and lived
there--looked at the speaker with a laugh. "That's perfectly true. What
have we all been doing but 'gingering' Ferrier for the last six months?
And here's the result! No earthly good in wearing one's self to
fiddle-strings over this election! I shall go and keep pigs in Canada!"

The group strolled along the Terrace, leaving behind them an animated
crowd, all busy with the same subject. In the middle of it they passed
Ferrier himself--flushed--with the puffy eyes of a man who never gets
more than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless,
smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him. The wind blew
chill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies who
were being entertained at tea drew their furs about them, shivering.

"He'll _have_ to go to the Lords!--that's flat--if we win this election.
If we come back, the new members will never stand him; and if we
don't--well, I suppose, in that case, he does as well as anybody else."

The remarks were McEwart's. Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him.

"Don't you be unjust, my boy. Ferrier's one of the smartest
Parliamentary hands England has ever turned out"

At this Barton roused.

"What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong
Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The
Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run _straight!_--as
the party wants him to run."

"All right. _Ad leones!_ Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only I
don't know what Marsham will say to it."

Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish
angle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east
wind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect:
broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for poverty
and the poor. But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts and
conditions of men, together with certain