Thof he's such a friend at a pinch, he's a rale mon of business.

He'll make the baunk worth a million! And how well he spoke at the great county meeting about the war, and the laund, and them bloodthirsty Mounseers! If their members were loike him, Muster Fox would look small!" The day declines; the town empties; whiskeys, horses, and carts are giving life to the roads and the lanes; and the market is deserted, and the bank is shut up, and William Mainwaring walks back to his home at the skirts of the town.

Not villa nor cottage, that plain English house, with its cheerful face of red brick, and its solid squareness of shape,--a symbol of substance in the fortunes of the owner! Yet as he passes, he sees through the distant trees the hall of the member for the town.

He pauses a moment, and sighs unquietly.

That pause and that sigh betray the germ of ambition and discontent.