n hair.

In this conjunction of affairs the editor of _The People's Banner_
found it somewhat difficult to trim his sails. It was a rule of life
with Mr. Quintus Slide to persecute an enemy. An enemy might at any
time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be
trodden on and persecuted. Mr. Slide had striven more than once to
make a friend of Phineas Finn; but Phineas Finn had been conceited
and stiff-necked. Phineas had been to Mr. Slide an enemy of enemies,
and by all his ideas of manliness, by all the rules of his life, by
every principle which guided him, he was bound to persecute Phineas
to the last. During the trial and the few weeks before the trial he
had written various short articles with the view of declaring how
improper it would be should a newspaper express any opinion of the
guilt or innocence of a suspected person while under trial; and he
gave two or three severe blows to contemporaries for having sinned in
the matter; but in all these articles he had contrived to insinuate
that the member for Tankerville would, as a matter of course, be
dealt with by the hands of justice. He had been very careful to
recapitulate all circumstances which had induced Finn to hate the
murdered man, and had more than once related the story of the
firing of the pistol at Macpherson's Hotel. Then came the telegram
from Prague, and for a day or two Mr. Slide was stricken dumb. The
acquittal followed, and Quintus Slide had found himself compelled to
join in the general satisfaction evinced at the escape of an innocent
man. Then came the re-election for Tankerville, and Mr. Slide felt
that there was opportunity for another reaction. More than enough
had been done for Phineas Finn in allowing him to elude the gallows.
There could certainly be no need for crowning him with a political
chaplet because he had not murdered Mr. Bonteen. Among a few other
remarks which Mr. Slide threw together, the following appeared in the
columns of _The People's Banner_:--

We must confess that we hardly understand the principle on
which Mr. Finn has been re-elected for Tankerville with so
much enthusiasm,--free of expense,--and without that usual
compliment to the constituency which is implied by the
personal appearance of the candidate. We have more than
once expressed our belief that he was wrongly accused in
the matter of Mr. Bonteen's murder. Indeed our readers
will do us the justice to remember t