first indication that the little priest had voted for him, and Roger was surprised, for Sir Joseph Ward was a Catholic, but church votes, like all others, could not be coerced in any given direction.
“Not too good, eh?” said Mac to Roger.
“It’s going to be damned close. The bush settles it now.”
“You’ll get more of the bush than you think,” growled Mac.
“I’m sure I hope so.”
Then Bob read out a number of names of Massey men who were safely in, and the possibility, now becoming more likely with every new set of figures, that Massey would come out with a majority, added to the tempest of feeling surging round them. It would be awful to lose here if the party won everywhere else.
“Sloan is leading well for the Bay of Islands,” Valerie read from her last envelope.
“Oh, I must get in,” groaned Roger.
Valerie was succumbing herself now to the swell of emotion about her. She thought while they waited of Dane, and wondered if he were in bed, if he were asleep, utterly aloof from this madness, utterly indifferent to the result. But she did wish he could have been there to enjoy with her the drama of it, the palpitating entrances and exits of Jimmy bursting with his own grand and glorious feeling as the Mercury of a cataclysmic night.
At half-past two the vibrations in the little room were almost too painful to be borne. There were only six returns to come. At that moment Roger was leading by twenty-one, and of the last places three were country and three were bush.
As for the outside world, it was about certain now that Ward was down and Massey riding to victory.
