Questioned whether he did not think he was entitled to be rated at the value of half-a-crown, he protested that whatever might be the sum of his worth, he was pure coin, of which neither party in Chippenden could accuse the silver of rubbing off; and he offered forthwith an impromptu apologue of a copper penny that passed itself off for a crown-piece, and deceived a portion of the country:  that was why (with a wave of the arm over the Hipperdon faction) it had a certain number of backers; for everybody on whom the counterfeit had been foisted, praised it to keep it in the currency.

’Now, gentlemen, I apprehend that Chippenden is not the pocket-borough for Hipperdon coin.  Back with him to the Mint! and, with your permission, we will confiscate the first syllable of his name, while we consign him to oblivion, with a hip, hip, hip, hurrah for Richmond!’

The cheers responded thunderingly, and were as loud when he answered a ’How ‘bout the Dauphin?’ by saying that it was the Tory hotel, of which he knew nothing.

‘A cheer for old Roy!’ Edbury sang out.

My father checked the roar, and turned to him.

‘Marquis of Edbury, come to the front!’

Edbury declined to budge, but the fellows round him edged aside to show him a mark for my father’s finger.

’Gentlemen, this is the young Marquis of Edbury, a member of the House of Lords by right of his birth, born to legislate for you and me.  He, gentlemen, makes our laws.  Examine him, hear him, meditate on him.’

He paused cruelly for Edbury to open his mouth.  The young lord looked confounded, and from that moment behaved becomingly.

‘He might have been doing mischief to-morrow,’ my father said to me, and by letting me conceive his adroitness a matter of design, comforted me with proofs of intelligent power, and made me feel less the melancholy conjunction of a piece of mechanism and a piece of criticism, which I was fast growing to be in the contemplation of the agencies leading to honour in our land.  Edbury whipped his four-in-hand to conduct our voters to the poll.  We had to pull hard against Tory interest.  It was a sharp, dubious, hot day—­a day of outcries against undue influence and against bribery—­a day of beer and cheers and the insanest of tricks to cheat the polling-booth.  Old John Thresher of Dipwell, and Farmer Eckerthy drove over to Chippenden to afford me aid and countenance, disconcerting me by the sight of them, for I associated them with Janet rather than with Ottilia, and it was to Ottilia that I should have felt myself rising when the figures increased their pace in my favour, and the yeasty mob surrounding my father’s superb four-horsed chariot responded to his orations by proclaiming me victor.

‘I congratulate you, Mr. Richmond,’ Dettermain said.  ’Up to this day I have had my fears that we should haul more moonshine than fish in our net.  Your father has accomplished prodigies.’