he returned
to my side, and in a lower tone of voice said,--

"I ought to mention to you that there has been much discussion on your
affair at Blake's table, and only one opinion on the matter among all
parties,--that you acted perfectly right. Sir George Dashwood,--no mean
judge of such things,--quite approves of your conduct, and, I believe,
wishes you to know as much; and now, once more, good-by."

CHAPTER X.

THE ELECTION.

The important morning at length arrived, and as I looked from my bed-room
window at daybreak, the crowd of carriages of all sorts and shapes
decorated with banners and placards; the incessant bustle; the hurrying
hither and thither; the cheering as each new detachment of voters came up,
mounted on jaunting-cars, or on horses whose whole caparison consisted in
a straw rope for a bridle, and a saddle of the same frail material,--all
informed me that the election day was come. I lost no further time, but
proceeded to dress with all possible despatch. When I appeared in the
breakfast-room, it was already filled with some seventy or eighty persons
of all ranks and ages, mingled confusedly together, and enjoying the
hospitable fare of my uncle's house, while they discussed all the details
and prospects of the election. In the hall, the library, the large
drawing-room, too, similar parties were also assembled, and as newcomers
arrived, the servants were busy in preparing tables before the door and up
the large terrace that ran the entire length of the building. Nothing could
be more amusing than the incongruous mixture of the guests, who, with every
variety of eatable that chance or inclination provided, were thus thrown
into close contact, having only this in common,--the success of the cause
they were engaged in. Here was the old Galway squire, with an ancestry that
reached to Noah, sitting side by side with the poor cotter, whose whole
earthly possession was what, in Irish phrase, is called a "potato
garden,"--meaning the exactly smallest possible patch of ground out of
which a very Indian-rubber conscience could presume to vote. Here sat the
old simple-minded, farmer-like man, in close conversation with a little
white-foreheaded, keen-eyed personage, in a black coat and eye-glass,--a
flash attorney from Dublin, learned in flaws of the registry, and deep in
the subtleties of election law. There was an Athlone horse-dealer, whose
habitual daily practices in imposing the halt, the lame, and