orators on the big
sofa would have advanced a stage further on the road through the
jungle, that had, with so much foresight and patience, been prepared
for them.

Young Mr. Coppinger's hopes and fears as to his prospects of becoming
a Member of Parliament varied no more than was suitable in the
possessor of the artistic temperament, but Barty, his agent in chief,
maintained an attitude of unbroken pessimism. That whisper of the
secret and late-declared antagonism of the Church had reached him, and
in the secure seclusion of his own office he inveighed against
clerical interference with all the fierceness of a dog chained in his
kennel, who knows that his adversaries are as unable to touch him as
he is to injure them. Only, in Barry's case, he was quite sure that
his barkings were unheard, and he would have been exceedingly alarmed
had he thought otherwise.

"I declare to God I don't care what way it goes!" Larry had said many
times, but most often when fatigue and discouragement had together
taken control.

Such times had come more often during the last week Before the
election, and they reached their climax on the evening of the polling
day. The two young men, mentally and physically demoralised by
fatigue, had at length, at an hour considerably past midnight, escaped
from their colleagues, and, having gained the sanctuary of Barty's
office, were drearily reviewing the position by the light of a smoky
lamp and over the ashes of a dead fire; counting possible votes,
making unconvincing calculations based on supposition, wading
hand-in-hand ever deeper into the Slough of Despond.

"I was talking to your father this evening," said Larry, lighting a
cigarette and letting himself fall into an ancient rocking-chair. "He
wouldn't give me an opinion one way or the other, but it's my belief
he thinks it's a bad chance."

"I believe he's done his best for you," said Barty, dubiously; "but
the way he's situated, he doesn't like to come out too strong one way
or the other."

"Quite right too; I'm a rotten proposition," said Larry, "and this
dam' cigarette won't draw!"

"I could stand getting licked," went on Barty, too preoccupied to
consider the plaints of his principal, "if I thought the Clergy had
played fair. Father Hogan and Father Sweeney stood to us well, and I
know Father Greer was for you at the first go-off; but God knows what
way he and the rest o' them went, after. I wouldn't trust them--"
His dark and mour