on
the way: The mob--how I loathe it!"

There was such pent-up fury in those words as to astonish even one whose
life had been passed in conflict with majorities.

"I hate its mean stupidities, I hate the sound of its voice, and the
look on its face--it's so ugly, it's so little. Courtier, I suffer
purgatory from the thought that I shall scrape in by the votes of the
mob. There is sin in using this creature and I am expiating it."

To this strange outburst, Courtier at first made no reply.

"You've been working too hard," he said at last, "you're off your
balance. After all, the mob's made up of men like you and me."

"No, Courtier, the mob is not made up of men like you and me. If it were
it would not be the mob."

"It looks," Courtier answered gravely, "as if you had no business in
this galley. I've always steered clear of it myself."

"You follow your feelings. I have not that happiness."

So saying, Miltoun turned to the door.

Courtier's voice pursued him earnestly.

"Drop your politics--if you feel like this about them; don't waste your
life following whatever it is you follow; don't waste hers!"

But Miltoun did not answer.

It was a wondrous still night, when, a few minutes before twelve, with
his forehead bandaged under his hat, the champion of lost causes
left the hotel and made his way towards the Grammar School for the
declaration of the poll. A sound as of some monster breathing guided
him, till, from a steep empty street he came in sight of a surging
crowd, spread over the town square, like a dark carpet patterned by
splashes of lamplight. High up above that crowd, on the little peaked
tower of the Grammar School, a brightly lighted clock face presided; and
over the passionate hopes in those thousands of hearts knit together by
suspense the sky had lifted; and showed no cloud between them and the
purple fields of air. To Courtier descending towards the square, the
swaying white faces, turned all one way, seemed like the heads of giant
wild flowers in a dark field, shivered by wind. The night had charmed
away the blue and yellow facts, and breathed down into that throng the
spirit of emotion. And he realized all at once the beauty and meaning
of this scene--expression of the quivering forces, whose perpetual
flux, controlled by the Spirit of Balance, was the soul of the world.
Thousands of hearts with the thought of self lost in one over-mastering
excitement!

An old man with a long grey bea