“I’m glad to hear that—­you’ll understand why when we meet again.  And, indeed, I quite agree with you.”

“Politics are no use nowadays,” pursued Northway.  “The questions of the time are social.  We want a party that is neither Liberal nor Tory.”

“Exactly.—­Well, now, may I depend upon you?”

“I’ll come when you send for me.”

“Very well.  I have your address.”

He stood up, hesitated a moment, and offered his hand, which Northway took without raising his eyes.

“I shall walk on into Clifton; so here we say good-bye for the present.—­A week or ten days.”

“I suppose you won’t alter your mind, Mr.—­Mr. Marks?”

“Not the least fear of that.  I have a public duty to discharge.”

So speaking, and with a peculiar smile on his lips, Glazzard walked away.  Northway watched him and seemed tempted to follow, but at length went down the hill.

CHAPTER XVIII

Disappointed in his matrimonial project, the Rev. Scatchard Vialls devoted himself with acrid zeal to the interests of the Conservative party.  He was not the most influential of the Polterham clerics, for women in general rather feared than liked him; a sincere ascetic, he moved but awkwardly in the regions of tea and tattle, and had an uncivil habit of speaking what he thought the truth without regard to time, place, or person.  Some of his sermons had given offence, with the result that several ladies betook themselves to gentler preachers.  But the awe inspired by his religious enthusiasm was practically useful now that he stood forward as an assailant of the political principles held in dislike by most Polterham church-goers.  There was a little band of district-visitors who stood by him the more resolutely for the coldness with which worldly women regarded him; and these persons, with their opportunities of making interest in poor households, constituted a party agency not to be despised.  They worked among high and low with an unscrupulous energy to which it is not easy to do justice.  Wheedling or menacing—­doing everything indeed but argue—­they blended the cause of Mr. Welwyn-Baker and that of the Christian religion so inextricably that the wives of humble electors came to regard the Tory candidate as Christ’s vicegerent upon earth, and were convinced that their husbands’ salvation depended upon a Tory vote.

One Sunday, Mr. Vialls took for his text, “But rather seek ye the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.”  He began by pointing out how very improper it would be for a clergyman to make the pulpit an ally of the hustings; far indeed be it from him to discourse in that place of party questions—­to speak one word which should have for its motive the advancements of any electioneering cause.  But in these times of social discontent and upheaval it must not be forgotten that eternal verities were at stake.  There were men—­there