“Oh, there was a little smudge on it—­a fly-spot or something, Charlie says.  But you couldn’t fool Whelan.”

“I hope,” said Stella meditatively, “that Lorne will get in by more than one.  He wouldn’t like to owe his election to a low-down trick like that”

“Don’t you be at all alarmed, you little girlish thing,” replied her brother.  “Lorne will get in by five hundred.”

John Murchison had listened to their excited talk, mostly in silence, going on with his dinner as if that and nothing else were the important matter of the moment.  Mrs Murchison had had this idiosyncrasy of his “to put up with” for over thirty years.  She bore it now as long as she could.

“Father!” she exploded at last.  “Do you think Lorne will get in by five hundred?”

Mr Murchison shook his head, and bestowed his whole attention upon the paring of an apple.  If he kept his hopes to himself, he also kept his doubts.  “That remains to be seen,” he said.

“Well, considering it’s your own son, I think you might show a little more confidence,” said Mrs Murchison.  “No thank you; no dessert for me.  With a member of the family being elected—­or not—­for a seat in Parliament, I’m not the one to want dessert.”

Between Mr Murchison and the milkman that morning, Mrs Murchison felt almost too much tried by the superior capacity for reticence.

It was seven in the evening before the ballot-boxes were all in the hands of the sheriff, and nine before that officer found it necessary to let the town know that it had piled up a majority of three hundred for Walter Winter.  He was not a supporter of Walter Winter, and he preferred to wait until the returns began to come in from Clayfield and the townships, in the hope that they would make the serious difference that was required of them.  The results were flashed one after the other to the total from the windows of the Express and the Mercury upon the cheering crowd that gathered in Market Square.  There were moments of wild elation, moments of deep suspense upon both sides, but when the final addition and subtraction was made the enthusiastic voters of South Fox, including Jim Whelan, who had neglected no further opportunity, read, with yells and groans, hurrahs and catcalls, that they had elected Mr Lorne Murchison to the Dominion House of Commons by a majority of seventy.

Then the band began to play and all the tin whistles to rejoice.  Young and Windle had the grace to blow their sirens, and across the excited darkness of the town came the long familiar boom of the Murchison Stove Works.  Every Liberal in Elgin who had any means of making a noise made it.  From the window of the Association committee room their young fellow-townsman thanked them for the honour they had done him, while his mother sat in the cab he had brought her down in and applauded vigorously between tears, and his father took congratulations from a hundred friendly hands.  They all went home in a torchlight procession, the band always playing, the tin whistles always performing; and it was two in the morning before the occasion could in any sense be said to be over.