Neither she nor anybody belonging to him heard of the boy’s escapade at the meeting, for upon that subject Job Legg felt it wisest to be silent.  And when the penultimate meeting passed, the spirit of it was such that those best able to judge again felt very sanguine for Ironsyde.  He had created a good impression and won a wide measure of support.  He had worked hard, traversed all the ground and left the people under no shadow of doubt as to his opinions.  Bridetown was for him; West Haven and Bridport were said to be largely in his favour, but the outlying agricultural district inclined towards his rival.  Raymond had, however, been at great pains to win the suffrage of the farmers, and his last meeting was on their account.

Before him now lay the promise of two days’ rest, and he accepted them very thankfully, for he began to grow weary in mind and body.  He had poured his vitality into the struggle which, started more or less as a sporting event, gradually waxed into a serious and all-important matter.  And as his knowledge increased and his physical energy waned, a cloud dulled his enthusiasm at times and more than once he asked himself if it was all worth while—­if this infinite trouble and high tension were expended to the wisest purpose on these ambitions.  He had heard things from politicians, who came to speak for him, that discouraged him.  He had found that single-mindedness was not the dominant quality of those who followed politics as a profession.  The loaves and fishes bulked largely in their calculations, and he heard a distinguished man say things at one of his meetings which Raymond knew that it was impossible he could believe.  For example, it was clearly a popular catchword that party politics had become archaic, and that a time was near when party would be forgotten in a larger and nobler spirit.  Speakers openly declared that great changes were in sight, and the constitution must be modified; but, privately, they professed no such opinions.  All looked to their party and their party alone for personal advance.  It seemed to Ironsyde that their spirits were mean spirits; that they concealed behind their profession a practice of shrewd calculation and a policy of cynical self-advance.  The talk behind the scenes was not of national welfare, but individual success, or failure.  The men who talked the loudest on the platform of altruism and the greatest good to the greatest number, were most alive in private conversation to the wire-pulling and intrigue which proceeded unseen; and it was in the machinery they found their prime interest and excitement, rather than in the great operations the machine was ostensibly created to achieve.  The whole business on their lips in private appeared to have no more real significance than a county cricket match, or any other game.