Hickney Heath blazed with excitement.  It is not every day that a thrill runs through a dull London borough, not even every election day.  For a London borough, unlike a country town, has very little corporate life of its own.  You cannot get up as much enthusiasm for Kilburn, say, as a social or historical entity, as you can for Winchester or Canterbury.  You may perform civic duties, if you are public-spirited enough, with business-like zeal, and if you are borough councillor you may be proud of the nice new public baths which you have been instrumental in presenting to the community.  But the ordinary man in the street no more cares for Kilburn than he does for Highgate.  He would move from one to the other without a pang.  For neither’s glory would he shed a drop of his blood.  Only at election times does it occur to him that he is one of a special brotherhood, isolated from the rest of London; and even then he regards the constituency as a convention defining. geographical limits for the momentary range of his political passions.  So that the day when an electric thrill ran through the whole of Hickney Heath was a rare one in its uninspiring annals.

The dramatic had happened, touching the most sluggish imaginations.  The Liberal candidate for Parliament, a respected Borough Councillor, a notorious Evangelical preacher, had publicly confessed himself an ex-convict.  Every newspaper in London—­and for the matter of that, every newspaper in Great Britain—­rang with the story, and every man, woman and child in Hickney Heath read feverishly every newspaper, morning and evening, they could lay their hands on.  Also, every man, woman and child in Hickney Heath asked his neighbour for further details.  All who could leave desk and shop or factory poured into the streets to learn the latest, tidings.  Around the various polling stations the crowd was thickest.  Those electors who had been present at Silas Finn’s meeting, the night before, told the story at first-hand to eager groups.  Rumours of every sort spread through the mob.  The man who had put the famous question was an agent of the Tories.  It was a smart party move.  Silas Finn had all the time been leading a double life.  Depravities without number were laid to his charge.  Even now the police were inquiring into his connection with certain burglaries that had taken place in the neighbourhood.  And where was he that day?  Who had seen him?  He was at home drunk.  He had committed suicide.  Even if he hadn’t, and was elected, he would not be allowed to take his seat in Parliament.

On the other hand, those in whose Radical bosoms burned fierce hatred for the Tories, spoke loud in condemnation of their cowardly tactics.  There was considerable free-fighting in the ordinarily dismal and decorous streets of Hickney Heath.  Noisy acclamations hailed the automobiles, carriages and waggonettes bringing voters of both parties to the polls.  Paul, driving in his gaily-decked car about the constituency, shared all these demonstrations and heard these rumours.  The latter he denied and caused to be denied, as far as lay in his power.  In the broad High Street, thronged with folk, and dissonant with tram cars and motor ’buses, he came upon a quarrelsome crowd looking up at a window above a poulterer’s shop, from which hung something white, like a strip of wall paper.