"Yes, it is on the way to Westminster," said Lord Saltoun, with a smile.
And so it happened that Horne Fisher arrived some days later at the little
station of a rather remote market town in the west, accompanied by a light
suitcase and a lively brother. It must not be supposed, however, that the
brother's cheerful tone consisted entirely of chaff. He supported the new
candidate with hope as well as hilarity; and at the back of his boisterous
partnership there was an increasing sympathy and encouragement. Harry
Fisher had always had an affection for his more quiet and eccentric brother,
and was now coming more and more to have a respect for him. As the
campaign proceeded the respect increased to ardent admiration. For Harry was
still young, and could feel the sort of enthusiasm for his captain in
electioneering that a schoolboy can feel for his captain in cricket.
Nor was the admiration undeserved. As the new three-cornered contest
developed it became apparent to others besides his devoted kinsman that there
was more in Horne Fisher than had ever met the eye. It was clear that his
outbreak by the family fireside had been but the culmination of a long course
of brooding and studying on the question. The talent he retained through life
for studying his subject, and even somebody else's subject, had long been
concentrated on this idea of championing a new peasantry against a new
plutocracy. He spoke to a crowd with eloquence and replied to an individual
with humor, two political arts that seemed to come to him naturally. He
certainly knew much more about rural problems than either Hughes, the
Reform candidate, or Verner, the Constitutional candidate. And he probed
those problems with a human curiosity, and went below the surface in a way
that neither of them dreamed of doing. He soon became the voice of popular
feelings that are never found in the popular press. New angles of criticism,
arguments that had never before been uttered by an educated voice, tests and
comparisons that had been made only in dialect by men drinking in the little
local public houses, crafts half forgotten that had come down by sign of hand
and tongue from remote ages when their fathers were free—all this created a
curious and double excitement. It startled the well informed by being a new
and fantastic idea they had never encountered. It startled the ignorant by being
an old and familiar idea they never thought to have seen revived. Men saw
things in a new light, and knew not even whether it was the sunset or the
dawn.
Practical grievances were there to make the movement formidable. As
Fisher went to and fro among the cottages and country inns, it was borne in on
him without difficulty that Sir Francis Verner was a very bad landlord. Nor
was the story of his acquisition of the land any more ancient and dignified than
he had supposed; the story was well known in the county and in most respects
was obvious enough. Hawker, the old squire, had been a loose, unsatisfactory