On that day there was only one serious topic in Elgin, and there could have been only one reference to business for Walter Winter.

The Dominion had come up the day before with the announcement that Mr Robert Farquharson who, for an aggregate of eleven years, had represented the Liberals of South Fox in the Canadian House of Commons, had been compelled under medical advice to withdraw from public life.

The news was unexpected, and there was rather a feeling among Mr Farquharson's local support in Elgin that it shouldn't have come from Toronto.

It will be gathered that Horace Williams, as he himself acknowledged, was wild.

The general feeling, and to some extent Mr Williams's, was appeased by the further information that Mr Farquharson had been obliged to go to Toronto to see a specialist, whose report he had naturally enough taken to party headquarters, whence the Dominion would get it, as Mr Williams said, by telephone or any quicker way there was.