They had all realized, after the first few weeks, that their young candidate was a trifle overbitten with it, though remonstrance had been a good deal curbed by Murchison's treatment of it.

When he had brought it forward at the late fall fairs and in the lonely country schoolhouses, his talk had been so trenchant, so vivid and pictorial, that the gathered farmers listened with open mouths, like children, pathetically used with life, to a grown-up fairy tale.

As Horace Williams said, if a dead horse could be made to go this one would have brought Murchison romping in.

And Lorne had taken heed to the counsel of his party leaders.

At joint meetings, which offered the enemy his best opportunity for travesty and derision, he had left it in the background of debate, devoting himself to arguments of more immediate utility.