To this letter Barrington made no reply.  Marsham, sore and weary, yet strung by now to an obstinacy and a fighting passion which gave a new and remarkable energy to his personality, threw himself fresh into a hopeless battle.  For a time, indeed, the tide appeared to turn.  He had been through two Parliaments a popular and successful member; less popular, no doubt, in the second than in the first, as the selfish and bitter strains in his character became more apparent.  Still he had always commanded a strong personal following, especially among the younger men of the towns and villages, who admired his lithe and handsome presence, and appreciated his reputation as a sportsman and volunteer.  Lady Lucy’s subscriptions, too, were an element in the matter not to be despised.

A rally began in the Liberal host, which had felt itself already beaten.  Marsham’s meetings improved, the Herald article was apparently forgotten.

The anxiety now lay chiefly in the mining villages, where nothing seemed to affect the hostile attitude of the inhabitants.  A long series of causes had led up to it, to be summed up perhaps in one—­the harsh and domineering temper of the man who had for years managed the three Tallyn collieries, and who held Lady Lucy and her co-shareholders in the hollow of his hand.  Lady Lucy, whose curious obstinacy had been roused, would not dismiss him, and nothing less than his summary dismissal would have appeased the dull hatred of six hundred miners.

Marsham had indeed attempted to put through a number of minor reforms, but the effect on the temper of the district had been, in the end, little or nothing.  The colliers, who had once fervently supported him, thought of him now, either as a fine gentleman profiting pecuniarily by the ill deeds of a tyrant, or as sheltering behind his mother’s skirts; the Socialist Vicar of Beechcote thundered against him; and for some time every meeting of his in the colliery villages was broken up.  But in the more hopeful days of the last week, when the canvassing returns, together with Marsham’s astonishing energy and brilliant speaking, had revived the failing heart of the party, it was resolved to hold a final meeting, on the night before the poll, at Hartingfield-on-the-Wold, the largest of the mining villages.

* * * * *

Marsham left Dunscombe for Hartingfield about six o’clock on an August evening, driving the coach, with its superb team of horses, which had become by now so familiar an object in the division.  He was to return in time to make the final speech in the concluding Liberal meeting of the campaign, which was to be held that night, with the help of some half-dozen other members of Parliament, in the Dunscombe Corn Exchange.

A body of his supporters, gathered in the market-place, cheered him madly as the coach set off.  Marsham stopped the horses for a minute outside the office of the local paper.  The weekly issue came out that afternoon.  It was handed up to him, and the coach rattled on.