matters and had once even taken his advice. Indeed, of them all, Dane most clearly perceived the value in the universal cosmos of that which Jimmy was—the exuberant start of fresh vitality into a devitalized world.
Dane gave a last look round the composing-room remembering the occasion on which he had seen it first. He did not look at Valerie, but turned to the men who had reached for their coats.
“I’m leaving to-night. Will you come along and have a drink?” He felt it pathetic that that was all he could say to them.
But Ryder and Johnson did not find it pathetic. They were very thirsty.
II
Many things combined to make that week the most exciting election period that Dargaville had ever known. The whole country was stirred by the possibility, loudly voiced by the Massey Party, that a change was at hand, and that the old Liberal Party which Dick Seddon raised to Empire fame was doomed to an imminent fall. Sir Joseph Ward, one of the cleverest financiers the dominion had known, was attacked for lack of any policy, and his side found little to say to stem the disrupting tide. Every vote was appealed to as it never had been before. Labour, the farmers, the landowners, the women, the factory hands, the city workers, the capitalists, the prohibitionists, the civil service were all alike appealed to to put new life in the country and a new man in the lead.
And the Far North in particular was roused out of a long apathy by the energetic campaigns being waged there by the three Massey candidates. Haines, of Marsden, was a tireless fighter with every chance of going in for the third time. The Bay of Islands man Sloan, up like
