Beauchamp referred him to the Tory camp, whence the placard alluding to those ladies had issued.

’Both of them ‘s ladies!  I guessed it,’ said the elector.

‘Did you guess that one of them is a mythological lady?’

’I’m not far wrong in guessing t’other’s not much better, I reckon.  Now, sir, may I ask you, is there any tale concerning your morals?’

‘No:  you may not ask; you take a liberty.’

’Then I’ll take the liberty to postpone talking about my vote.  Look here, Mr. Commander; if the upper classes want anything of me and come to me for it, I’ll know what sort of an example they’re setting; now that’s me.’

‘You pay attention to a stupid Tory squib?’

‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire, sir.’

Beauchamp glanced at his note-book for the name of this man, who was a ragman and dustman.

‘My private character has nothing whatever to do with my politics,’ he said, and had barely said it when he remembered having spoken somewhat differently, upon the abstract consideration of the case, to Mr. Tomlinson.

’You’re quite welcome to examine my character for yourself, only I don’t consent to be catechized.  Understand that.’

‘You quite understand that, Mr. Tripehallow,’ said Oggler, bolder in taking up the strange name than Beauchamp had been.

’I understand that.  But you understand, there’s never been a word against the morals of Mr. Cougham.  Here’s the point:  Do we mean to be a moral country?  Very well, then so let our representatives be, I say.  And if I hear nothing against your morals, Mr. Commander, I don’t say you shan’t have my vote.  I mean to deliberate.  You young nobs capering over our heads—­I nail you down to morals.  Politics secondary.  Adew, as the dying spirit remarked to weeping friends.’

‘Au revoir—­would have been kinder,’ said Palmet.

Mr. Tripehallow smiled roguishly, to betoken comprehension.

Beauchamp asked Mr. Oggler whether that fellow was to be taken for a humourist or a five-pound-note man.

‘It may be both, sir.  I know he’s called Morality Joseph.’

An all but acknowledged five-pound-note man was the last they visited.  He cut short the preliminaries of the interview by saying that he was a four-o’clock man; i.e. the man who waited for the final bids to him upon the closing hour of the election day.

‘Not one farthing!’ said Beauchamp, having been warned beforehand of the signification of the phrase by his canvassing lieutenant.

‘Then you’re nowhere,’ the honest fellow replied in the mystic tongue of prophecy.