national life, when great decisions had sometimes to be taken on inadequate premises, that fact generally reacted on the minds of its citizens. In the local idiom "they could see as far through a brick wall as most." And in the matter of a Stunt election it was well for themselves and for the country at large that they were endowed with this faculty. Otherwise, Sir Stuyvescent Milgrim must have had a walk-over.
As it was, that gentleman and those who stood behind him were soon alive to the situation. On the surface everything seemed in their favor. The arts of the U. P. were designed for such an occasion; few could hope to stand against its peculiar blend of malfeasance; but from the outset the personal equation came into play. Endor himself was a born orator; the wife he had so recently married, with her attractive presence and her quick American wits, made a brilliantly effective figure on his platform; and with the Mayor of the City, that old idol of the populace to father them, they formed a combination which in time and place was irresistible. A John Endor meeting could always put an enemy conventicle "to bed." Nor in the matter of "sideshows," as Sir Munt called them, was the enemy allowed to have things all his own way, as might have been the case in an agricultural constituency or a dead-alive cathedral city.
Blackhampton's Mayor, having satisfied himself as to where the truth lay, was not a man for half measures. Promptly he set his hand to the plow. And it
