Since Tyson was not to mold his country’s destinies in Parliament, he turned his attention to local politics as the next best thing, thus satisfying his appetite for action.  He did what he had told Miss Batchelor he should do; he dissipated himself in parochial patriotism.  He went to and fro, he presided at meetings, sat on committees, made speeches on platforms.  You would hardly have thought that one parish could have contained so much fiery energy.  Moreover, he found a field for his journalistic talents in a passionate correspondence in the local papers.  Tyson could speak, Tyson could write, where other men maunder and drivel.  His tongue was tipped with fire and his pen with vitriol.  Looking about him for a worthy antagonist, he singled out Smedley, M.D., a local practitioner given over to two ideals—­sanitation and reform.  Needless to say, for sanitation and reform Tyson cared not a hang.  It was a stand-up fight between the man of facts and the man of letters.  Smedley was solid and imperturbable; he stood firm on his facts, and defended himself with figures.  Tyson, a master of literary strategy, was alert and ubiquitous.  Having driven Smedley into a tangled maze of controversy, Tyson pursued him with genial irony.  When Smedley argued, Tyson riddled his arguments with the lightest of light banter; when Smedley hung back, Tyson lured him on with some artful feint; when Smedley thrust, Tyson dodged.  Finally, when Smedley, so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent contempt of danger.  No doubt Tyson’s method was extremely amusing and effective, and his sparkling periods proved the enemy’s dullness up to the hilt; unfortunately, the prosy but responsible representations of Smedley had more weight with committees.

Only two people really appreciated that correspondence.  They were Mrs. Nevill Tyson and Miss Batchelor.  “At this rate,” said the lady of Meriden, smiling to herself, “my friend Samson will very soon bring down the house.”

Tyson, contemptuous of the gallery, had been playing to Sir Peter and Sir Peter alone, and he flattered himself that this time he had caught the great man’s eye.  It was in the first excitement of the elections; Tyson had come in from Drayton, and was glancing as usual at the visiting cards on the hall table.  On the top of the dusty pile that had accumulated in the days of his wife’s illness there was actually a fresh card.  Tyson’s face lost something of its militant expression when he read the name “Sir Peter Morley,” and he smiled up through the banisters at his wife as she came downstairs to greet him.

“Ha, Molly, I see Morley’s looked us up again.  He couldn’t very well be off it much longer.”

“He called about the elections.”

“Oh—­I thought you were out?”

“So I was.  I met him in the drive and made him come in.”

“H’m.  Did he say anything about my letters in the Herald?”