as if that and nothing else were the important
matter of the moment. Mrs Murchison had had this idiosyncrasy of his
"to put up with" for over thirty years. She bore it now as long as she
could.

"FATHER!" she exploded at last. "Do you think Lorne will get in by five
hundred?"

Mr Murchison shook his head, and bestowed his whole attention upon the
paring of an apple. If he kept his hopes to himself, he also kept his
doubts. "That remains to be seen," he said.

"Well, considering it's your own son, I think you might show a little
more confidence," said Mrs Murchison. "No thank you; no dessert for
me. With a member of the family being elected--or not--for a seat in
Parliament, I'm not the one to want dessert."

Between Mr Murchison and the milkman that morning, Mrs Murchison felt
almost too much tried by the superior capacity for reticence.

It was seven in the evening before the ballot-boxes were all in the
hands of the sheriff, and nine before that officer found it necessary to
let the town know that it had piled up a majority of three hundred for
Walter Winter. He was not a supporter of Walter Winter, and he preferred
to wait until the returns began to come in from Clayfield and the
townships, in the hope that they would make the serious difference that
was required of them. The results were flashed one after the other
to the total from the windows of the Express and the Mercury upon the
cheering crowd that gathered in Market Square. There were moments of
wild elation, moments of deep suspense upon both sides, but when the
final addition and subtraction was made the enthusiastic voters of South
Fox, including Jim Whelan, who had neglected no further opportunity,
read, with yells and groans, hurrahs and catcalls, that they had elected
Mr Lorne Murchison to the Dominion House of Commons by a majority of
seventy.

Then the band began to play and all the tin whistles to rejoice. Young
and Windle had the grace to blow their sirens, and across the excited
darkness of the town came the long familiar boom of the Murchison Stove
Works. Every Liberal in Elgin who had any means of making a noise
made it. From the window of the Association committee room their young
fellow-townsman thanked them for the honour they had done him, while
his mother sat in the cab he had brought her down in and applauded
vigorously between tears, and his father took congratulations from a
hundred friendly hands. They all went home in a torchligh