For several years there appeared to be a feud and a bitterness between the former friends; yet it showed itself in no other manner than by a careful avoidance of each other.  The continental war came to an end; the manufacturing distress increased exceedingly.  There came troublous times, and a fierce warfare of politics.  Great Stockington was torn asunder by rival parties.  On one side stood preeminent, Mr. Spires; on the other towered conspicuously, Simon Deg.  Simon was grown rich, and extremely popular.  He was on all occasions the advocate of the people.  He said that he had sprung from, and was one of them.  He had bought a large tract of land on one side of the town; and intensely fond of the country and flowers himself, he had divided this into gardens, built little summer-houses in them, and let them to the artisans.  In his factory he had introduced order, cleanliness, and ventilation.  He had set up a school for the children in the evenings, with a reading-room and conversation-room for the work-people, and encouraged them to bring their families there, and enjoy music, books, and lectures.  Accordingly, he was the idol of the people, and the horror of the old school of manufacturers.

“A pretty upstart and demagogue I’ve nurtured,” said Mr. Spires often, to his wife and daughter, who only sighed, and were silent.

Then came a furious election.  The town, for a fortnight, more resembled the worst corner of Tartarus than a Christian borough.  Drunkenness, riot, pumping on one another, spencering one another, all sorts of violence and abuse ruled and raged till the blood of all Stockington was at boiling heat.  In the midst of the tempest were everywhere seen, ranged on the opposite sides, Mr. Spires, now old and immensely corpulent, and Simon Deg, active, buoyant, zealous, and popular beyond measure.  But popular though he was, the other and old tory side still triumphed.  The people were exasperated to madness; and when the chairing of the successful candidate commenced, there was a terrific attack made on the procession by the defeated party.  Down went the chair, and the new member, glad to escape into an inn, saw his friends mercilessly assailed by the populace.  There was a tremendous tempest of sticks, brickbats, paving-stones, and rotten eggs.  In the midst of all this, Simon Deg and a number of his friends, standing at the upper window of an hotel, saw Mr. Spires knocked down and trampled on by the crowd.  In an instant, and before his friends had missed him from amongst them, Simon Deg was seen darting through the raging mass, cleaving his way with a surprising vigor, and gesticulating, and no doubt shouting vehemently to the rioters, though his voice was lost in the din.  In the next moment his hat was knocked off, and himself appeared in imminent danger:  but, another moment, and there was a pause, and a group of people were bearing somebody from the frantic mob into a neighboring shop.  It was Simon Deg, assisting in the rescue of his old friend and benefactor, Mr. Spires.