. Much of the
material we have to use, the people we have to influence, the way we
have to travel, may seem sordid, but the light is shining there all the
time, Tallente. We are not politicians. We are deliverers."

It was one of Dartrey's rare moments of genuine enthusiasm. His visitor
forgot for a moment the businesslike office with its row of telephones,
its shelves of blue books and masses of papers. He seemed to be
breathing a new and wonderful atmosphere.

"I am your man, Dartrey," he promised simply. "Make what use of me you
will."

Dartrey smiled, once more the plain, kindly man of affairs.

"To descend, then, very much to the earth," he said, "to-night you must
go to Bradford. Odames will resign to-morrow. This time," he added,
with a little smile, "I think I can promise you the Democratic support
and a very certain election."

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER I

Tallente found himself possessed of a haunting, almost a morbid feeling
that a lifetime had passed since last his car had turned out of the
station gates and he had seen the moorland unroll itself before his
eyes. There was a new pungency in the autumn air, an unaccustomed
scantiness in the herbiage of the moor and the low hedges growing from
the top of the stone walls. The glory of the heather had passed,
though here and there a clump of brilliant yellow gorse remained. The
telegraph posts, leaning away from the wind, seemed somehow scantier;
the road stretched between them, lonely and desolate. From a farmhouse
in the bosom of the tree-hung hills lights were already twinkling, and
when he reached the edge of the moor, and the sea spread itself out
almost at his feet, the shapes of the passing steamers, with their long
trail of smoke, were blurred and uncertain. Below, his home field, his
wall-enclosed patch of kitchen garden, the long, low house itself lay
like pieces from a child's play-box stretched out upon the carpet. Only
to-night there was no mist. They made their cautious way downwards
through the clearest of darkening atmospheres. On the hillsides, as
they dropped down, they could hear the music of an occasional sheep
bell. Rabbits scurried away from the headlights of the car, an early
owl flew hooting over their heads. Tallente, tired with his journey,
perhaps a little worn with the excitement of the last two months, found
something dark and a little lonely about the unoccupied house, something
a little dreary in his solitary dinner and the lo