Beauchamp held him firmly to the task of canvassing.

‘Then will you tell me where she lives?’ Palmet stipulated.  He reproached Beauchamp for a notorious Grand Turk exclusiveness and greediness in regard to women, as well as a disposition to run hard races for them out of a spirit of pure rivalry.

‘It’s no use contradicting, it’s universally known of you,’ reiterated Palmet.  ’I could name a dozen women, and dozens of fellows you deliberately set yourself to cut out, for the honour of it.  What’s that story they tell of you in one of the American cities or watering-places, North or South?  You would dance at a ball a dozen times with a girl engaged to a man—­who drenched you with a tumbler at the hotel bar, and off you all marched to the sands and exchanged shots from revolvers; and both of you, they say, saw the body of a drowned sailor in the water, in the moonlight, heaving nearer and nearer, and you stretched your man just as the body was flung up by a wave between you.  Picturesque, if you like!’

‘Dramatic, certainly.  And I ran away with the bride next morning?’

‘No!’ roared Palmet; ’you didn’t.  There’s the cruelty of the whole affair.’

Beauchamp laughed.  ’An old messmate of mine, Lieutenant Jack Wilmore, can give you a different version of the story.  I never have fought a duel, and never will.  Here we are at the shop of a tough voter, Mr. Oggler.  So it says in my note-book.  Shall we put Lord Palmet to speak to him first?’

‘If his lordship will put his heart into what he says,’ Mr. Oggler bowed.  ‘Are you for giving the people recreation on a Sunday, my lord?’

’Trap-bat and ball, cricket, dancing, military bands, puppet-shows, theatres, merry-go-rounds, bosky dells—­anything to make them happy,’ said Palmet.

’Oh, dear! then I ’m afraid we cannot ask you to speak to this Mr. Carpendike.’  Oggler shook his head.

‘Does the fellow want the people to be miserable?’

‘I’m afraid, my lord, he would rather see them miserable.’

They introduced themselves to Mr. Carpendike in his shop.  He was a flat-chested, sallow young shoemaker, with a shelving forehead, who seeing three gentlemen enter to him recognized at once with a practised resignation that they had not come to order shoe-leather, though he would fain have shod them, being needy; but it was not the design of Providence that they should so come as he in his blindness would have had them.  Admitting this he wished for nothing.

The battle with Carpendike lasted three-quarters of an hour, during which he was chiefly and most effectively silent.  Carpendike would not vote for a man that proposed to open museums on the Sabbath day.  The striking simile of the thin end of the wedge was recurred to by him for a damning illustration.  Captain Beauchamp might be honest in putting his mind on most questions in his address, when there was no demand upon him to do it; but honesty was no antidote to impiety.  Thus Carpendike.