“They’re not alone, they’ve got ten little pigs in with them; they’re jolly well crowded.  They were pretty mad at being shut in, but not half as mad as the old sow is at being shut out from her young ones.  If she gets in while they’re there she’ll bite them into mincemeat.  I can get them out by letting a short ladder down through the top window, and that’s what I’m going to do if we win.  If their blighted father gets in, I’m just going to open the door for the sow, and let her do what she dashed well likes to them.  That’s why I want to know when the poll will be declared.”

Here the narrator rang off.  A wild stampede and a frantic sending-off of messengers took place at the other end of the telephone.  Nearly all the workers on either side had disappeared to their various club-rooms and public-house bars to await the declaration of the poll, but enough local information could be secured to determine the scene of Hyacinth’s exploit.  Mr. John Ball had a stable yard down near the Crawleigh Road, up a short lane, and his sow was known to have a litter of ten young ones.  Thither went in headlong haste both the candidates, Hyacinth’s mother, his aunt (Mrs. Panstreppon), and two or three hurriedly-summoned friends.  The two Nubian donkeys, contentedly munching at bundles of hay, met their gaze as they entered the yard.  The hoarse savage grunting of an enraged animal and the shriller note of thirteen young voices, three of them human, guided them to the stye, in the outer yard of which a huge Yorkshire sow kept up a ceaseless raging patrol before a closed door.  Reclining on the broad ledge of an open window, from which point of vantage he could reach down and shoot the bolt of the door, was Hyacinth, his blue sailor-suit somewhat the worse of wear, and his angel smile exchanged for a look of demoniacal determination.

“If any of you come a step nearer,” he shouted, “the sow will be inside in half a jiffy.”

A storm of threatening, arguing, entreating expostulation broke from the baffled rescue party, but it made no more impression on Hyacinth than the squealing tempest that raged within the stye.

“If Jutterly heads the poll I’m going to let the sow in.  I’ll teach the blighters to win elections from us.”

“He means it,” said Mrs. Panstreppon; “I feared the worst when I saw that butterscotch incident.”

“It’s all right, my little man,” said Jutterly, with the duplicity to which even a Colonial Secretary can sometimes stoop, “your father has been elected by a large majority.”

“Liar!” retorted Hyacinth, with the directness of speech that is not merely excusable, but almost obligatory, in the political profession; “the votes aren’t counted yet.  You won’t gammon me as to the result, either.  A boy that I’ve palled with is going to fire a gun when the poll is declared; two shots if we’ve won, one shot if we haven’t.”

The situation began to look critical.  “Drug the sow,” whispered Hyacinth’s father.