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Ft-BLISHED BY SPECIAL ARBANGEMENT.…

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Ft-BLISHED BY SPECIAL ARBANGEMENT. n. IN SHEEP^CLOTHING. BY HEADON HILL. 'Author of "The Ocean King Mystery," The Sentence of the Court," "The Kiss of the .Enemy, link by Link," Ac., Ac. [COPYRIGHT.] CHAPTER 1. 1 OUTSIDE THE TOWN-HALL. I The great fight was nearly over. The arc lamps in the open space round the Town-hall Winked and flashed upon a rast concourse -,vaitin-- in the pitiless rain for the result, all unheeding physical discomfort in keen zest to learn at the earliest moment which side had won. All Grandport was there, squeezing and jostling, but for the most part with the good hiimear of a British crowd eager to I ratify the election of its Pa.rliaraenta.ry repre- sentative. The fish docks were deserted, and | so were the mighty ship-buildin.- works J higher up the estuary of the tidal river; even a. contingent of the night watchmen had £ nea,k-q(l av/ay from their post-s for balf-u-n- hour to be present at the declaration of t!1A ¡ poll. The combat was unique in its way, because the combatants not only belonged to two t classes as wide apart as the poles, but because 1 thy had occupied the relative position of master and man." It was a bye-election, caused by the accept- ance by Sir George Linscombe, the sitting j member, ef an office under the Government, necessitating his offering himself to his con- stituents for re-election. The appointment had been made because it was supposed to be a perfectly safe seat. In official circles [ Carwardino stooped and kiescd the dead- c In Id'3 brow, I in London no one bad expeoted that there would be a contest at all. It was the general beiief that the gt-eat shipbuilder would be returned unopposed, and would go back to I Westminster after a pleasant excursion to his native town. It had come, therefore, as a bolt from the 1 blue to his party when ft transpired tha-t hot only was there to be a contest, but that a strong candidate was in the field in the person of young Will Carwardine, the eloquent local champion of the cause of Labour. And interest increased a hundred- fold, even in the distant Metropolie, when it came to be known that the silver-tongued orator of the masses had formerly worked as riveter in the Lipscombe ya-rds. The battle was fought strenuously, but without bitterness on either side, for Car- wardine was a straight hitter from the shoulder, disdaining petty personalities; and Sir George, as a generous employer, was a favourite among the wage-earnera of the mighty industry his enterprise bad created. When they met in the course of their canvass the two candidates greeted each other cor. dially, and in their speeches referred to their I opponent, in terms of respect. And this very popularity of the antagonists fanned the excitement to fever heat, for it was recognised that whichever won it would be by but a narrow majority. Suddenly there was a stir, followed by a hush of expectancy among the waiting crowd. A tall gentleman, with a light overcoat over his evening dress, came out on to the steps of the Town-hall. But it w-as quickly made apparent that he had nothing to do with the announcement of the poll. leisurely lighting J A cigarette, he threw an amused smile over the throng that barred his path as be endeavoured to descend. "Thank you eo much," those nearest heard; him say to the poliee-inepector who cleared ( a way for him. "Awfully sorry to die- I commode these good folk, and still sorrier for myself—not to be able to stop and hear the verdict of Grandport. But I am bound to be in London early to-morrow, and must catch the night mail." The speaker was a good-lookm? young MoAa of d?ht-and-twenty. and his. pretty ma,BN?N6 as he bowed and smilè(Ch1.s.iit .thróu.gh the throng helped to facilitate-etis progress. He j disappeared like a brilliant meteor in the dense, drab cloud of the sons of toil, and j their ranks closed up solidly behind him. "Thats Lord Wargrave, who's been helpÎng: Sir George in his canvatio," said one of the crowd to his neighbour. Must be an impor- tant engagement to take him off like that after all the hard work he's put in." Howling toff, ain't he? Son and heir of the Marquess of Liskeard, I'm told on Food  authority." He may be a howling toff, bUt any way there's no beastly side on him," was the eomment. of a rabbit-fa-ced little man at Ule elbow of the first speaker. I saw him only yesterday, talking as chummy ae you please with old Wilmer Kite, the timekeeper at Lipscombe's. in the saloon bar of the Golden Compass, down on the Extension Quay. Not much of a crib that for the aristocracy." He's a regular caution at kissing babies to get votes," chimed in another bystander. "Ãye: 'tis the kids be kisses up here. but "ti" their mothers and growed-up sisters he likes best in Lunnon, I lam from my darter 8S is in service yonder," remarked a grimy- faced <-oaltrimmer. No one paid much attention to this caviller, he bein 2 a notorious partisan and anti- Lipscombite; and, indeed, the malicious utterance would have stood no ohance of If-bate in any ca6e, for at that moment the cuge mob surged and thrilled again with .hat vague prescience of Coming events tha-t "ways congregated humanity. This time rith justification, for a number of people earoe trooping out of the handsome portals, and stcod, awaiting silence, on the broad, eione platform at the top of the steps. The returning officer aavanced to the front and raised his hat, hushing the hoarse murmur to a whisper that finally died away. Ta.king instant advantage of the lull, in one clear, resonant shout he voiced the pro- nouncement of the electors of Grandport: CARWARDINE 15,867 I LIPSCOMBE 14,934 j It was all over. jLne nery young ex-nveter had beaten his old employer by the hand- eome majority of 933 votes. There he waa now. a well-knit figure in a. blue serge suit, stepping forward to propose a vote of thanks to the returning officer, and the roar of cheers that greeted his appearance wa.s re- doubled ae it WM seen that he paused to ilasp the outstretched hand of & grey-tbaired jlderly gentleman of commanding carnage, rho was holding himoelf a little more erect b an- irs-aa-I just now. Good old Sir Jarge! Sir Jarge don't bear to malice!" yelled an admirer, and the Blunder of applause that followed wai as much for the vanquished as for the victor. The subsequent amenities were rapidly run through. Carwardine spoke a few words of thanks to his supporters, and of modest diffidence in his own ability to serve their cause, but of determination to give them of the best that woe in him. Sir George Lips- combe, striking the good-natured note that had prevailed throughout the election, fol- lowed with a eemi-humoroas, tactful little speech to the effect that if they could do without him at Westmineter they couldn't at Grandport, and then, as if by magic, the crowd melted away. The group on the steps of the Town-haJl terforce remained till there was room for iem to move, some in their carriages and some on foot. Pride of place was given to Sir George Lipscombe's barouche, which. horsed by two spankling chestnuts, drew up first. The great shipbuilder, still bearing up bravely, got. into the vehicle and looked expectantly round for his son Owen to join him. He smiled rather w-earily when he espied his son's eagrr face within a oouple ot inches of the capable-looking countenance of the victorious candidate. The two young men c-eemed to be holding a friendly, but animated, conversation. "Owen is overdoing it," muttered the defeated member. "I flatter myself I've made it all correct and pretty in the hand-shaking line. And .I'm in a hurry—in a deuce of a hurry. When a man has to do what's in front of me to-night he wants to be done with all this tomfoolery and get to business." Sir George's patience was not sorely taxed. Owen Lipscombe slopped Will Carwardine cordially on the shoulder, and, jumping into the carriage, took his seat at his father's side. You're not grizzling over the job, dad, I hope?" he said, laying his hand affec- tionately on his father's knee as the coach- man drove off. Xot me," laughed the shipbuilder rather grimly I'm glad it's over, though; and look here, lad, though it was all very well | coming the friendly dodge with the oppo-zi- tion during the contest, there's no need to rub it in so thick any longer. I have the very highest respect for young Carwardine. but we don't want to lie down and let him make a doormat of us. There was no reason for you to stay and butter him up. at the expense of keeping me waiting." "I wasn't buttering him up, but quite the reverse," replied Owen, gravely. I also share your good opinion of him as 11 public character and an honourable opponent, but I couldn't resist giving him a gentle hint thaA privately he has been behaving like a be*ae<t to-day. His child has been very seriously ill, you know, and I stopped to inquire for it. Would you believe it, he haaht been near his home all day, and knevr no more about the child's condition then I did." "What did you say?" 8i,r George asked, » covert smile of amusement curling his firm mouth. Nothing much, but I let him see that 1 was surprised," replied the young man in a tone that drew from his father a. subdued chuckle. Proud as he was of his son, Sir George thought him just a little too quixotic in his outlook upon a world that has small use for sentiment nowadays. What made Wa.rgra,ve out and run at the last moment without waiting for the revult? Owen asked presently. Something in the question seemed to tickle Sir George immensely. Indeed, a superficial observer might have seen signs that the defeated candidate was enjoying in rather a sardonic mood some huge joke' that was hidden from all bat himself. He laughed again, and made answer in words which Owen, in a flash of enlightenment, was to remember long afterwards: Perhape he scented coming disaster." He has worked well for the cause, but I ahouldn t have given him credit for being M squeamish as that," remarked Owen thought- fully, taking it for granted that bis father meant the disaster that had befallen himself politically. Lord Wargrave strikes me as somewhat superficial, with all his goods in (the window. Honestly, I don't care for him, dad. I believe we should have done better if the central organisation had sent us down a lees showy but more sincere helper. Jndeed, I wonder, after spending a fo--tnight--M co- operation witb him, that he consented even for such a brief time to bury nis brilliancy in a place of thews and sinews like Grand- port—a. place where brains are at a dis- count." The barouche- was drawing up before the entrance of a gaily-lighted hotel, wherein were Sir George's committee-rooms. Before descending the shipbuilder turned sharply to his son. and, still with the airtof hugging to himself that mysterious jest, replied: Perhaps, my boy, he had an axe of his own to grind." CHAPTER 11. I A TROUBLOUS NIGHT. Will Carwardine, the newly-elected member for Grandport, after listening to the nothing much" which Owen Lipscombe had said to him. took a hasty farewell of his friends. excusing himself from accom- panying them to the headquarters whence his campaign liad been conducted. You go and celebrate the triumph, mates," he said. There's nothing more to do to-night but shout, and I must get home. My little one is sick, you know, and the wife's been alone with her all day. I'm a bit anxious. They recognised his claim, and with words of encouragement and sympathy let him go without orotest Running down the steps of the To>vn-hall, he dodged the mayor's car- riage, and strode off across the square into a network of mean streets that would take him to his house. This was situated not far from the waterside, within a stone's throw of the entrance gates of the Lipscombe yards. On giving up bis work there to become the paid secretary of the Amalgamated Riveters, he bad had neither the money nor the inclination to change his abode. He was a man of high aims and something of an idealist, this sturdy young fellow who had ousted the wealthy shipbuilder from the representation of his native town. The love of swaying vast multitudes to his own way of thinking-the iove of power, to be quite mndid-possesged him in every fibre of his being to the exclusion of other interests with more intimate, if lees lofty, claims. Not by any means that he was without his human side. He was not heartless so much as absorbed in what he intended to be his life'3 work. It had only needed Owen Lipscombe's rebuke, more implied than spoken, to send him hot-foot homewards from the scene of his triumph. Mr. Owen's a good sort, and be WM right to rajee his eyebrows when I couldn't tell him how Jenny was," he mur- mured as he taoed through the slums of Grandport. 'Tisn't that I didn't eare, God knows. But I ought to haw sent messengers, seeing that I couldn't go yaelf." -At- lae be turned into 6" broader read, and so a little further on game to a rQw of U. j "'f<I' "f- '3J' terrace houses facing the estuary of the river. There was a. street lamp opposite the centre of the row, and it showed him the figure of a woman at the door of one of the houses, straining her eyes up the road towards him. As he arrived within her vision she ran out to meet him and threw herself on his breast in an agony of weeping. Oh, Will, Will!" she moaned, "my baby, my little Jenny, is dead!" Eren at that moment, staggering under the shock of his loss, Carwardine winced. Her use of the word my" seemed like a reproach, all the more severe because so obviously unconscious. He put his strong arm round her and drew her into the hou&e, trying to soothe and ask questions in the same breath. Then, when he got her into the cramped little eit- ting-room, he gave up the hopeless task, and for a time the bereaved couple sat on the cheap horee-hair sofa together, mingling their tears. After a while they grew calmer, and bit by bit Carv/ariine learned from his wife the details of the domestic tragedy that had crowned his public triumph. The little two- year-old girl had been seized with convul- sions at four o'clock in the afternoon, and, though the doctor had been sent for and had dene what he could, the end had come three hours later. "She looks so sweet. Will," sobbed the dis- traught mother. Wouldn't you like to go up and see her? Treading softly up the narrow staircase, they entered the chamber of death, and stood one on each side of the waxen figure on the bed. Ca.rwardine stopped and kissed the dead child's brow, and as he rose two tears coursed down his cheeks. The sight of them seemed to act on his wife like some evil spell. She broke into peal after peal of horrid laughter. "It's so funny-so funny!" she shrieked. "The doctor wrestled for my darling's life like a hero. No one could have done more. And yet the moment the breath was out of that dear body lie looked across at me and says It's all over, and it's God's will, Mrs. Carwardine. I haven't recorded my vote for your husband yet, and I shall have to hurry up.' This cursed election! It's put first by eveT-yone--iii front of everything. If you'd been back at Lipscombe's, working for a wage, I don't believe this would have hap- peited-nol, like this, anyhow. I could have sent for you then, and you'd have been with me in my grief." Come away, dear," pleaded the man. No one is sorrier than me for the way this has fallen out. Sick and sorry as you are about the thing itself, I am, and in that jou'll believe m3. But there's the future to face. Let's go downstairs." The hyst-erical outbreak seemed to have re- lieved Beesio Carwardine for the moment, and slie quietly followed her husband down into the sitting-room. The window was open. for it was a hot night in May. Through it could be seen the lights of vessels anchored in the tidal river, and as they entered the room the clock at Lipscombe's ship-building yard bayed out the hour or haJf after mid- night. There was no air stirring outside, and from a,ar_off--from the more populous quarter of the town, where the excitement of the election had not died down—came the hum of distant voices. Round about this comparatively lonely waterside terrace all I was quiet, except mat ne so una oi someone running—of someone who must have just passed the house—was growing rapidly fainter as the footsteps receded. A cloth cap was lying on the table, and Carwariine vaguely wondered how it came there; for it was not his, and he was nearly sure that it had not been there when he and his wife went upstairs. It was no time, how- ever, to speculate about such an apparently unimportant tifle, and in an absent-minded way he took up the cap and tossed it into a, corner. The action was not entirely object- less, for he wanted a clear space on the spindly little table on which to spread his elbows with his head in his hands-a charac- teristic attitude of his when thinking deeply. Bessie was far too absorbed in her grief to have observed the incident of the cap, which, in the turmoil of succeeding days lay where her husband had thrown it all unheeded. She sank into a low cane chair by the empty grate, and stared with unseeing eyes through the open window at the lights on the river. A beautiful woman, little more than a girl, was the wife of the new member for Grandport. Despite the shabby black dress, which humble folk always seem able to produce at a moment's notice, she would have commanded attention anywhere, so alluring was her gracious personality. Tall and grandly formed, with a natural elegance just now accentuated by an unconscious pose of eorrow that made of her a very Niobe, no one would have suspected that Will Car- wrdine had wooed and won her from behind the counter of a small draper's shop. Her grey eyes were clear and steadfast at normal times, and her pure complexion was tinged with the hue of youth and health. The regular features were marked with a singular refinement, and the halo of ruddy-gold hair completed a picture of glorious womanhood rare in any class. Will raised his head presently, his voice breaking the silence sharply. He was so used of late to addressing vast audiences that he found a little difficulty in modulating it in the narrow confines of his parlour. I "I suppose we can manage the funeral by Thursday?" was what he said. Bes&ie looked up tit him blankly. She knew, none better, that for all the diffident half- note of deprecation in his tone, he would have his way. "The day after to-morrow!" she almost wailed. This is only Tuesday, Will. Have you forgotten such small things in your great triumph? Mayn't I keep the dear little dead thing no longer than two days-only just to love aind look at, Will, so that I can remem- ber her—you, too, if you care to-in the blank, empty years that are to oome?" "I shan't need to look at her to remember her," answered Carwardine, clearing his throat huskily. Then he paused, and went on, "If this hadn't have happened I should have started for London to-morrow morning, and taken my seat in the House the 6aime night. Even if the funeral is fixed for Thurs- day, I shan't, be able to be at Westminster before Friday." The woman's eyes, softly reminiscent with a great tenderness only a minute before. glinted hardly. The firm, white column of her throat swelled in a difficulty of utterance. "Westminster!" she repeated scornfully. "What do I care for Westminster, with ray balby lying dead upstairs. And you would shovel it under ground within three days of the breath being out of its body in order to go to Westminster! Hell is where you'll go to. Will Carwardine, for an unnatural father. What's Westminster, anyway?" Carwardine sighed a little wearily. "West- minster is where Parliament sits, dearie- where I've got to go willy nilly now that the good folk of Grandport have elected me. The party would be sorely disappointed if I wasn't there to represent them at the earliest moment. There's an important division, too, on Friday, when my vote may make all the difference." "Division?" said Bessie not understanding the jargon. "There's going to be sad division over this betwixt you and me, I reckon, seeing that you put the party before what most good men hold dear. It's been the party this and the party that for the last four weeks, till I'm sick of the very name of it-aye, and of you." Then did Will Carwardine, stiing by reproaches that conscience told him were not wholly merited, make a remark that Was to oost him dear. The mere making of it showed that however shrewd he might be in politics, however competent to lead masses of men, he had not mastered the first principles of leading that far more complex mechanism, a woman's heart. "Come, my dear one, you're being too hard on me," he said, kindly. "You'll feel less bitter when you trouble isn't quite so fresh. And in your new life in London there will be plenty of distractions to help Time, the healer, do his work." His wife looked at him, the angry scorn in her eyes giving way slowly to the dawn of a certain sly intelligence—an expression that had never been seen on that fair young loounten.ance before. Her husband was not looking at her or he might have been startled —and warned. It was as though she had obtained from his own words, a hint upon which she had formed a momentous resolve. How she would have answered him can never be known, for at that instant a patter of flying feet was heard outside, ceasing sud- denly as the lamp-light shone on Owen Lips- combe's aishen face framed in the open window. Carwardine? Ah. I thought you lived here," he gasped. "My father ba4 been shot in his private room at the yard- You know the neighbourhood. For God's sake, where is the nearest doctor?" (TO BE OONTtNUED TO-XOSBOTT.)

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