He talked quite as much nonsense as Captain Dashmore on every subject except the landed interest; there he was great, for he knew the subject well,--knew it by the instinct that comes with practice, and compared to which all your showy theories are mere cobwebs and moonshine.
The agricultural outvoters--many of whom, not living under Lord Lansmere, but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided themselves on their independence, and gone against my Lord--could not in their hearts go against one who was every inch the farmer's friend.

They began to share in the earl's personal interest against the Man from Baker Street; and big fellows, with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's tight little body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering the shops, "intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore indignantly declared.
These new recruits made a great difference in the musterroll of the Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a fair question for even betting.

At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck contest, Mr.Audley Egerton beat the captain by two votes; and the names of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law, Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on the squire's estate.
These votes were unexpected; for though Mark Fairfield had come to Lansmere on purpose to support the squire's brother, and though the Avenels had been always stanch supporters of the Lansmere Blue interest, yet a severe affliction (as to the nature of which, not desiring to sadden the opening of my story, I am considerately silent) had befallen both these persons, and they had left the town on the very day after Lord L'Estrange and Mr.Egerton had quitted Lansmere Park.
Whatever might have been the gratification of the squire, as a canvasser and a brother, at Mr.Egerton's triumph, it was much damped when, on leaving the dinner given in honour of the victory at the Lansmere Arms, and about, with no steady step, to enter a carriage which was to convey him to his Lordship's house, a letter was put into his hands by one of the gentlemen who had accompanied the captain to the scene of action; and the perusal of that letter, and a few whispered words from the bearer thereof, sent the squire back to Mrs.Hazeldean a much soberer man than she had ventured to hope for.

The fact was, that on the day of nomination, the captain having honoured Mr.Hazeldean with many poetical and figurative appellations,--such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan,"-- the squire had retorted by a joke about "Saltwater Jack;" and the captain, who like all satirists was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent to be called "Salt-water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" and a "Bloodsucking Vampire." The letter, therefore, now conveyed to Mr.Hazeldean by a gentleman, who, being from the Sister Country, was deemed the most fitting accomplice in the honourable destruction of a brother mortal, contained nothing more nor less than an invitation to single combat; and the bearer thereof, with the suave politeness enjoined by etiquette on such well-bred homicidal occasions, suggested the expediency of appointing the place of meeting in the neighbourhood of London, in order to prevent interference from the suspicious authorities of Lansmere.
The natives of some countries--the warlike French in particular--think little of that formal operation which goes by the name of DUELLING.
Indeed, they seem rather to like it than otherwise.

But there is nothing your thorough-paced Englishman--a Hazeldean of Hazeldean--considers with more repugnance and aversion than that same cold-blooded ceremonial.