between the two; they came of the new country but not of the new light; they were democrats who had never thrown off the monarch—­what harm did he do there overseas?  They had the air of being prosperous, but not prosperous enough for theories and doctrines.  The Liberal vote of South Fox had yet to be split by Socialism or Labour.  Life was a decent rough business that required all their attention; there was time enough for sleep but not much for speculation.  They sat leaning forward with their hats dropped between their knees, more with the air of big schoolboys expecting an entertainment than responsible electors come together to approve their party’s choice.  They had the uncomplaining bucolic look, but they wore it with a difference; the difference, by this time, was enough to mark them of another nation.  Most of them had driven to the meeting; it was not an adjournment from the public house.  Nor did the air hold any hint of beer.  Where it had an alcoholic drift the flavour was of whisky; but the stimulant of the occasion had been tea or cider, and the room was full of patient good will.

The preliminaries were gone through with promptness; the Chair had supped with the speakers, and Mr Crow had given him a friendly hint that the boys wouldn’t be expecting much in the way of trimmings from him.  Stamping and clapping from the back benches greeted Mr Farquharson.  It diminished, grew more subdued, as it reached the front.  The young fellows were mostly at the back, and the power of demonstration had somehow ebbed in the old ones.  The retiring member addressed his constituents for half an hour.  He was standing before them as their representative for the last time, and it was natural to look back and note the milestones behind, the changes for the better with which he could fairly claim association.  They were matters of Federal business chiefly, beyond the immediate horizon of Jordanville, but Farquharson made them a personal interest for that hour at all events, and there were one or two points of educational policy which he could illustrate by their own schoolhouse.  He approached them, as he had always done. on the level of mutual friendly interest, and in the hope of doing mutual friendly business.  “You know and I know,” he said more than once; they and he knew a number of things together.

He was afraid, he said, that if the doctors hadn’t chased him out of politics, he never would have gone.  Now, however, that they gave him no choice, he was glad to think that though times had been pretty good for the farmers of South Fox all through the eleven years of his appearance in the political arena, he was leaving it at a moment when they promised to be better still.  Already, he was sure, they were familiar with the main heads of that attractive prospect and, agreeable as the subject, great as the policy was to him, he would leave it to be further unfolded by the gentleman whom they all hoped to enlist in the cause, as his successor for this constituency,