The musicians had arrived within a few feet of the door of the Pig and Whistle. The barber had been waiting in terrible anxiety for me to hand him over his half security, and I now wanted to do it without delay. The note, which was for 100l., had been divided in halves, and was ready for my device. I handed him over his half, which he rapidly thrust into his trousers-pocket, and left me as he might leave a tormentor, shouting out, “Come along, lads, and hear the music.”
The procession moved forward amid deafening huzzas, and a volume of what I must, I suppose, as a matter of courtesy, call music, and the bewilderment of many spectators. Shufflebotham shouted, in well-feigned glee,
“All right, my lads; he’s a right ’un. We are all going to vote for him;” and sundry other more extravagant exclamations.
Twenty-three votes were recorded by ten minutes to four by John Shufflebotham and his friends, without let or hindrance from Tory prizefighters, roughs, or any other men. Shufflebotham did get drunk that night, and I neither saw nor heard any more of him until next morning.
Next day, about ten o’clock in the morning, John Shufflebotham called upon me at the committee-room as arranged. I preferred to have the attorney and the agent with me at this interview.
“Well, John Shufflebotham,” I was the first to say, “I suppose you have come for the other half of your note?”
The patriotic barber, who had sold his vote and influence, looked a little sheepish and timid.
I said, “It is all right. These gentlemen are the lawyers; they know all about every thing connected with the election, and they are of course in our secret.”
“They know what I want, then?”
“Yes, here it is,” I observed, handing over to him the other half of the note which he sought; but as I did so, I said, “It is of no use to you. It is a Bank-of-Elegance note, which another man of your trade in B—— gives away in the street.”