Through the anxious year of 1868 Mr.Welwyn-Baker sat firm as a rock; an endeavour to unseat him ended amid contemptuous laughter.

In 1874 the high-tide of Toryism caused only a slight increase of congratulatory gurgling in the Polterham backwater; the triumphant party hardly cared to notice that a Liberal candidate had scored an unprecedented proportion of votes.

Welwyn-Baker sat on, stolidly oblivious of the change that was affecting his constituency, denying indeed the possibility of mutation in human things.

Yet even now the Literary Institute was passing into the hands of people who aimed at making it something more than a place where retired tradesmen could play draughts and doze over _Good Words_; already had offensive volumes found harbourage on the shelves, and revolutionary periodicals been introduced into the reading-room.

From time to time the _Mercury_ uttered a note of warning, of protest, but with no echo from the respectable middle-class abodes where Polterham Conservatism dozed in self-satisfaction.