of the Royal Navy, and the great family of the Earls of Romfrey, one of the heroes of the war, and the recipient of a Royal Humane Society’s medal for saving life in Bevisham waters, were something more than the Radical doctor’s political son; and, sir, it was to this end, aim, and object, that I wrote the article I am not ashamed to avow as mine, and I do so, sir, because of the solitary merit it has of serving your political interests as the liberal candidate for Bevisham by counteracting the unpopularity of Dr. Shrapnel’s name, on the one part, and of reviving the credit due to your valour and high bearing on the field of battle in defence of your country, on the other, so that Bevisham may apprehend, in spite of party distinctions, that it has the option, and had better seize upon the honour, of making a M.P. of a hero.’

Beauchamp interposed hastily:  ’Thank you, thank you for the best of intentions.  But let me tell you I am prepared to stand or fall with Dr. Shrapnel, and be hanged to all that humbug.’

Timothy rubbed his hands with an abstracted air of washing.  ’Well, commander, well, sir, they say a candidate’s to be humoured in his infancy, for he has to do all the humouring before he’s many weeks old at it; only there’s the fact!—­he soon finds out he has to pay for his first fling, like the son of a family sowing his oats to reap his Jews.  Credit me, sir, I thought it prudent to counteract a bit of an apothecary’s shop odour in the junior Liberal candidate’s address.  I found the town sniffing, they scented Shrapnel in the composition.’

‘Every line of it was mine,’ said Beauchamp.

’Of course it was, and the address was admirably worded, sir, I make bold to say it to your face; but most indubitably it threatened powerful drugs for weak stomachs, and it blew cold on votes, which are sensitive plants like nothing else in botany.’

’If they are only to be got by abandoning principles, and by anything but honesty in stating them, they may go,’ said Beauchamp.

’I repeat, my dear sir, I repeat, the infant candidate delights in his honesty, like the babe in its nakedness, the beautiful virgin in her innocence.  So he does; but he discovers it’s time for him to wear clothes in a contested election.  And what’s that but to preserve the outlines pretty correctly, whilst he doesn’t shock and horrify the optics?  A dash of conventionalism makes the whole civilized world kin, ye know.  That’s the truth.  You must appear to be one of them, for them to choose you.  After all, there’s no harm in a dyer’s hand; and, sir, a candidate looking at his own, when he has won the Election . . .’

‘Ah, well,’ said Beauchamp, swinging on his heel, ’and now I’ll take my leave of you, and I apologize for bringing you down here so early.  Please attend to what I have said; it’s peremptory.  You will give me great pleasure by dining with me to-night, at the hotel opposite.  Will you?  I don’t know what kind of wine I shall be able to offer you.  Perhaps you know the cellar, and may help me in that.’