under the guidance of an ideal.  Like all men who are worth anything, either in public or private, he possessed a keen sense of humour, and was too awake to the ludicrous aspects of charlatanry to fall into the pits it offered on every band.  His misfortune was the difficulty with which he uttered himself; even when he got over his nervousness, words came to him only in a rough-and-tumble fashion; he sputtered and fumed and beat his forehead for phrases, then ended with a hearty laugh at his own inarticulateness, Something like this was his talk in the library of nights: 

’There’s a man called Rapley, an old-clothes dealer—­fellow I can’t get hold of.  He’s hanging midway—­what do you call it?—­trimming, with an eye to the best bargain.  Invaluable, if only I could get him, but a scoundrel.  Wants pay, you know; do anything for pay; win the election for me without a doubt, if only I pay him; every blackguard in Dunfield hand and glove with him.  Now pay I won’t, yet I’m bound to get that man.  Talked to him yesterday for two hours and thirty-five minutes by the parish church clock, just over his shop—­I mean the clock is.  The fellow hasn’t a conviction, yet he can talk you blue; if I had his powers of speech—­there it is I fail, you see.  I have to address a meeting tomorrow; Rapley ’ll be up at me, and turn me inside out.  He’d do as much for the other man, if only I’d pay him.  That isn’t my idea; I’m going to win the election clean-handed; satisfaction in looking back on an honest piece of work; what?  I’ll have another talk with him to-morrow.  Now look at this map of the town; I’ve coloured it with much care.  There you see the stronghold of the Blues.  I’m working that district street by street—­a sort of moral invasion.  No humbug; I set my face against humbug.  If a man’s a rogue, or a sot, or a dirty rascal, I won’t shake hands with him and pretend—­you know—­respect, friendship, how are your wife and children, so on.  He’s a vote, and I’ve only to deal with him as a vote.  Can he see that two and two make four?  Good; I’m at him by that side.  There are my principles; what have you to urge against them?  He urges damned absurdities.  Good; I prove to him that they are damned absurdities.’

At times Wilfrid managed to lead the talk to other subjects, such as were suggested by the books around the room.  Baxendale had read not a little, and entirely in the spheres of fact and speculation.  Political economy and all that appertained to it was his speciality, but he was remarkably strong in metaphysics.  Wilfrid had flattered himself that he was tolerably familiar with the highways of philosophy, but Baxendale made him feel his ignorance.  The man had, for instance, read Kant with extraordinary thoroughness, and discussed him precisely as he did his electioneering difficulties; the problems of consciousness he attacked with hard-headed, methodical patience, with intelligence, moreover, which was seldom at fault.  Everything