John Moore and James Rice went back to headquarters for further advice.  Angus’s woman sitting on the cellar door knitting was a contingency that required to be met with guile.

Consternation sat on the face of the Committee when they told their story.  They had not counted on this.  The wildest plans were discussed.  Tom Stubbins began a lengthy story of an elopement that happened down at the “Carp,” where the bride made a rope of the sheets and came down from an upstairs window.  Tom was not allowed to finish his narrative, though, for it was felt that the cases were not similar.

No one seemed to be particularly anxious to go back and interrupt Mrs. Angus’s knitting.

Then there came into the assembly one of the latest additions to the Conservative ranks, William Batters, a converted and reformed Liberal.  He had been an active member of the Liberal party for many years, but at the last election he had been entirely convinced of their unworthiness by the close-fisted and niggardly way in which they dispensed the election money.

He heard the situation discussed in all its aspects.  Milton Kennedy, with inflamed oratory, bitterly bewailed his brother’s defection—­“not only wrong himself, but leadin’ others, and them innocent lambs!”—­but he did not offer to go out and see his brother.  The lady who sat knitting on the cellar door seemed to be the difficulty with all of them.

The reformed Liberal had a plan.

“I will go for him,” said he.  “Angus will trust me—­he doesn’t know I have turned.  I’ll go for John Thomas, and Angus will give him to me without a word, thinkin’ I’m a friend,” he concluded, brazenly.

“Look at that now!” exclaimed the member elect.  “Say, boys, you’d know he had been a Grit—­no honest, open-faced Conservative would ever think of a trick like that!”

“There is nothing like experience to make a man able to see every side,” said the reformed one, with becoming modesty.

An hour later Angus was roused from his bed by a loud knock on the door.  Angus had gone to bed with his clothes on, knowing that these were troublesome times.

“What’s the row?” he asked, when he had cautiously opened the door.

“Row!” exclaimed the friend who was no longer a friend, “You’re the man that’s makin’ the row.  The Conservatives have ’phoned in to the Attorney-General’s Department to-night to see what’s to be done with you for standin’ between a man and his heaven-born birthright, keepin’ and confinin’ of a man in a cellar, owned by and closed by you!”

This had something the air of a summons, and Angus was duly impressed.

“I don’t want to see you get into trouble.  Angus,” Mr. Batters went on; “and the only way to keep out of it is to give him to me, and then when they come out here with a search-warrant they won’t find nothin’.”

Angus thanked him warmly, and, going upstairs, roused the innocent John from his virtuous slumbers.  He had some trouble persuading John, who was a profound sleeper, that he must arise and go hence; but many things were strange to him, and he rose and dressed without very much protest.