ers get a man
well into the polling booth, they push him in behind a little curtain
and make him vote. The voting, of course, is by secret ballot, so that
no one except the scrutineers and the returning officer and the two or
three people who may be round the poll can possibly tell how a man has
voted.

That's how it comes about that the first results are often so
contradictory and conflicting. Sometimes the poll is badly arranged
and the scrutineers are unable to see properly just how the ballots
are being marked and they count up the Liberals and Conservatives in
different ways. Often, too, a voter makes his mark so hurriedly and
carelessly that they have to pick it out of the ballot box and look at
it to see what it is.

I suppose that may have been why it was that in Mariposa the results
came out at first in such a conflicting way. Perhaps that was how it
was that the first reports showed that Edward Drone the Independent
candidate was certain to win. You should have seen how the excitement
grew upon the streets when the news was circulated. In the big rallies
and meetings of the Liberals and Conservatives, everybody had pretty
well forgotten all about Drone, and when the news got round at about
four o'clock that the Drone vote was carrying the poll, the people were
simply astounded. Not that they were not pleased. On the contrary.
They were delighted. Everybody came up to Drone and shook hands and
congratulated him and told him that they had known all along that what
the country wanted was a straight, honest, non-partisan representation.
The Conservatives said openly that they were sick of party, utterly done
with it, and the Liberals said that they hated it. Already three or four
of them had taken Drone aside and explained that what was needed in the
town was a straight, clean, non-partisan post-office, built on a piece
of ground of a strictly non-partisan character, and constructed under
contracts that were not tainted and smirched with party affiliation. Two
or three men were willing to show to Drone just where a piece of ground
of this character could be bought. They told him too that in the matter
of the postmastership itself they had nothing against Trelawney, the
present postmaster, in any personal sense, and would say nothing against
him except merely that he was utterly and hopelessly unfit for his job
and that if Drone believed, as he had said he did, in a purified civil
service, he ought to begin by pu