"Between ourselves," I said, "I don't mind very much. I am not the right man for this constituency. It has outgrown me. I have not the knack of handling a big crowd. What I want is a fine old crusted unprogressive seat, where I shan't constantly be compelled to drop my departmental work and rush down to propitiate my supporters with untruthful harangues. I'm a square peg here. Now, if they had wanted a really fit and proper candidate for this Parliamentary Division, Robin, they ought to have approached you."
"Och!" said Robin carelessly, "they did—a month ago! Good night!"
[CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.]
A PROPHET IN HIS OWN COUNTRY.
An old woman in a white mutch stands at the door of a farmhouse in a Scottish glen. Her face is wrinkled, and her dim eyes are peering down the track which leads from the steading to the pasture. Being apparently unable to focus what she wants to see she adjusts a pair of spectacles.
This action brings into her range of vision a distant figure which is engaged in shepherding a herd of passive but resisting cows through a gap in the dyke. It is a slow business, but the procession gradually nears home; and when the man at the helm succeeds in steering his sauntering charges safely between the Scylla of a hay-rick and the Charybdis of the burn, the old lady takes off her spectacles and relaxes her vigilance.
When she looks again, though, she breaks into an exclamation of dismay. The leaders of the straggling procession have safely reached the door of the byre close by; but one frisky young cow, suddenly swerving through an open gate, breaks away down a sloping field of turnips at a lumbering gallop. The herdsman is out of sight round a bend in the road.
"The feckless body!" observes the old lady bitterly. Then she raises her voice.
"Elspeth!"