The same assurance
greeted him several times over. Every friend wanted to remind him of
the enemy's exigency, and to assure him that the enemy's new policy was
enough by itself to bring him romping in at last; and to every assurance
he presented the same acceptable attitude of desiring for particular
reasons to take special note of such valuable views. At the end he
had neither elicited nor imparted a single opinion of any importance;
nevertheless, he was quite entitled to his glow of satisfaction.

Among Mr Winter's qualifications for political life was his capacity
to arrive at an estimate of the position of the enemy. He was never
persuaded to his own advantage; he never stepped ahead of the facts.
It was one of the things that made him popular with the other side,
his readiness to do justice to their equipment, to acknowledge their
chances. There is gratification of a special sort in hearing your points
of vantage confessed by the foe; the vanity is soothed by his open
admission that you are worthy of his steel. It makes you a little less
keen somehow, about defeating him. It may be that Mr Winter had an
instinct for this, or perhaps he thought such discourse more profitable,
if less pleasant, than derisive talk in the opposite sense. At all
events, he gained something and lost nothing by it, even in his own
camp, where swagger might be expected to breed admiration. He was
thought a level-headed fellow who didn't expect miracles; his forecast
in most matters was quoted, and his defeats at the polls had been to
some extent neutralized by his sagacity in computing the returns in
advance.

So that we may safely follow Mr Winter to the conclusion that the
Liberals of South Fox were somewhat put to it to select a successor to
Robert Farquharson who could be depended upon to keep the party credit
exactly where he found it. The need was unexpected, and the two men
who would have stepped most naturally into Farquharson's shoes were
disqualified as Winter described. The retirement came at a calculating
moment. South Fox still declared itself with pride an unhealthy division
for Conservatives; but new considerations had thrust themselves among
Liberal counsels, and nobody yet knew what the country would say to
them. The place was a "Grit" strong-hold, but its steady growth as an
industrial centre would give a new significance to the figures of the
next returns. The Conservative was the manufacturers' party, and had
been eve