He looked over the subdivisional reports with Williams and Farquharson, and gave ear to their warning interpretations; but his heart was an optimist, and turned always to the splendid projection upon the future that was so incomparably the title to success of those who would unite to further it.

His mind accepted the old working formulas for dealing with an average electorate, but to his eager apprehending heart it seemed unbelievable that the great imperial possibility, the dramatic chance for the race that hung even now, in the history of the world, between the rising and the setting of the sun, should fail to be perceived and acknowledged as the paramount issue, the contingency which made the by-election of South Fox an extraordinary and momentous affair.

He believed in the Idea; he saw it, with Wallingham, not only a glorious prospect, but an educative force; and never had he a moment of such despondency that it confounded him upon his horizon in the faded colours of some old Elizabethan mirage.
The opera house, the night of Mr Murchison's final address to the electors of South Fox, was packed from floor to ceiling, and a large and patient overflow made the best of the hearing accommodation of the corridors and the foyer.

A Minister was to speak, Sir Matthew Tellier, who held the portfolio of Public Works; and for drawing a crowd in Elgin there was nothing to compare with a member of the Government.

He was the sum of all ambition and the centre of all importance; he was held to have achieved in the loftiest sense, and probably because he deserved to; a kind of afflatus sat upon him.