to help his poorer fellow-inhabitants to a game in the open air once a week!"

Rudd was horrified. If he had blushed in the other meeting, it was from an attack of delicacy probably quite false and to be resisted. But here his blood boiled at an outrage. This was low. Mr. Brayshaw ought not to allow it. Money had nothing to do with legislation. He began to back out.

"I turn next," the speaker relentlessly continued, "to the accounts of the Cottage Hospital, and what do I find? 'Thomas Sergison, Esq., one guinea.' And this is the gentleman to whom we are asked to entrust our interests in Parliament, this grudging subscriber to the well-being of his town! No, gentlemen, what I say is we want no curmudgeon to represent us." (Loud applause.)

Above the turmoil a voice in the body of the hall was heard.

"He gave another ten pounds a little while ago," it shouted.

Every head turned in that direction, and Rudd felt a thrill of pride in the courage of this supporter of his family honour.

But the chairman quickly extinguished it. "How long ago?" he asked.

"On the 13th," said the man, consulting a paper. "Yes," said the chairman with a sneer, "and it was on the 12th that Mr. Sergison accepted the invitation of his party to stand for Caston! We know what that ten pounds was for. It wasn't for the Cottage

Hospital! (Loud cheers.) It was for the seat!" (Great excitement.)

Sicker at heart than before, Rudd, praying not to be recognized, continued to squeeze his way out, but it was very difficult, as he met more people pressing in.

"Jear that?" one man said to another. "That's the way. He's giving Sergison beans."

"I didn't know he was so mean," said another, "but I did know he was a windbag. And look at the way they heckled him last night. He hadn't an answer." "Please let me pass," Rudd said desperately.

But before he could get through into the sweet night air he had to hear further and even more damaging criticisms.

His father had never been a demi-god; but this was awful. Was it true? Anyway, ought such things to be said of one's father? Was it not a defect in a father to be so vulnerable to such common people? Could anything like that be said of Mr. Brayshaw? But was Mr. Sergison so mean? Now Rudd came to think of it, lots of boys returned to school with a quid and he never had had more than half-a-crown.

His

Rudd reached home in a state of misery. mother had gone to bed and he went to sit with her. "Why didn't you stay?" she asked.

"I didn't like it," he said.

"Politics are very horrid," she replied with a sigh. They held each other's hands in the firelight for a long while in silence.

"Why are you so unhappy?" Mrs. Sergison at last inquired.

Bit by bit Rudd told her.

"Is it true?" he managed at last to ask, thus voicing the question which she knew was in his depths.

"Politics always lead to low personalities," she said. "But that ten pounds," Rudd asked, "wouldn't he have given it if he hadn't thought it might be useful for the election ?"

"We mustn't examine father's actions like that," she said. "How I hoped he wouldn't touch the thing at all! But he has had to put himself in the hands of his agent-that little Mr. Quale, whom I expect you saw, with the little black moustache and white waistcoatand I never liked him. In politics all kinds of tricks seem to be allowed-tricks that I hope you will always think low. Poor father! But remember that he has always been the best of fathers to you. Now go to bed, dear. To-morrow will be a terrific day, and we shall want all the sleep we can get."

But it was long before Rudd, on the drawing-room sofa, slept. He had visitations of shame that kept him restless and nervous: for his father, most of all; for his mother; for himself. In some vague way for Liberalism, too. A wise man would never have put himself in such a position. If a man like his father could afford ten pounds for a hospital in November, he could have afforded it at the time he gave only that miserable guinea. To a hospital, too, for poor people!

Gladstone, Bright, Fawcett-they wouldn't have done that!

He heard carriage-wheels and the hall full of loud men's voices. Lord William Ruse was laughing. Then the smoking-room door banged.

Rudd was glad he had not to say good-night to them.

Falling uneasily to sleep at last, he dreamed of barristers with confident smiles and strong white teeth, into whose cage his father and himself were being thrust; and with their hot breath scorching him, he woke in terror.

Mr. Sergison was defeated by a large majority, and Rudd took the news back to school on the day following the poll.

"You should have let me come and help," Pascoe said.

ON

CHAPTER XV

THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. VOSPER

NE afternoon in the summer holidays Rudd found a stranger at tea with his father and mother. His father called the stranger Sam, and the stranger called his father Tommy. It was the first time that Rudd had heard his father called Tommy, and there was something odd about it. His mother and his relations called him either Tom or Thomas. Rudd had become used to hearing his father called by his surname only, which for a long time had given him a kind of shock, as though of presumption or familiarity carried too far, even to a point of disrespect; but "Tommy" was quite a novelty. Rudd looked at his father with new eyes, as though searching for the traces of that lost boyhood or youth to which the affectionate diminutive was applicable, but he failed to find it.

The stranger, it seemed, was Mr. Samuel Vosper, and he and Rudd's father had been at school together and had remained friends. He was now a jovial shabby man, this Sam, with odd clothes, but Rudd