“He’s not here,” said Angus, looking around the circle of light that the lantern threw.

“Are you sure?” asked James Rice, after a painful pause.

“Yes,” said Angus, with exaggerated ease, affecting not to notice the significance of the question.  “Jack went to Nelson to-day, and he ain’t back yet.  He went about three o’clock,” went on Angus, endeavoring to patch up a shaky story with a little interesting detail.  “He took over a bunch of pigs for me that I am shippin’ into Winnipeg, and he was goin’ to bring back some lumber.”

“I was in Nelson to-day, Angus,” said John Moore, sternly; “just came from there, and I did not see John Thomas.”

Angus, though fallen and misguided, was not entirely unregenerate; a lie sat awkwardly on his honest lips, and now that his feeble effort at deception had miscarried, he felt himself adrift on a boundless sea.  He wildly felt around for a reply, and was greatly relieved by the arrival of his father on the scene, who, seeing the lights of the auto in the yard, had come out hurriedly to see what was the matter.  Grandpa Kennedy, although nearing his ninetieth birthday, was still a man of affairs, and what was still more important on this occasion, a lifelong Conservative.  Grandpa knew it was the night before the election; he also had seen what he had seen.  Grandpa might be getting on, but he could see as far through a cellar door as the next one.  Angus, glad of a chance to escape, went on to the stable, leaving the visiting gentlemen to be entertained by Grandpa.

Grandpa was a diplomat; he wanted to have no hard feelings with anyone.

“Good-night, boys,” he cried, in his shrill voice; he recognized the occupants of the auto and his quick brain took in the situation.  “Don’t it beat all how the frost keeps off?  This reminds me of the fall, ’leven years ago—­we had no frost till the end of the month.  I ripened three bushels of Golden Queen tomatoes!” All this was delivered in a very high voice for Angus’s benefit—­to show him, if he were listening, how perfectly innocent the conversation was.

Then as Angus’s lantern disappeared behind the stable, the old man’s voice was lowered, and he gave forth this cryptic utterance: 

“John Thomas is in the cellar.”

Then he gaily resumed his chatter, although Angus was safe in the stable; but Grandpa knew what he knew, and Angus’s woman might be listening at the back door.  “Much election talk in town, boys?” he asked, breezily.  They answered him at random.  Then his voice fell again.  “Angle’s dead against Brown—­won’t let you have John Thomas—­put him down cellar soon as he saw yer lights; Angie’s woman is sittin on the door knittin’—­she’s wors’n him—­don’t let on I give it away—­I don’t want no words with her!—­Yes, it’s grand weather for threshin’; won’t you come on away in?  I guess yer horse will stand.”  The old man roared with laughter at his own joke.