Marsham left Dunscombe for Hartingfield about six o'clock on an August evening, driving the coach, with its superb team of horses, which had become by now so familiar an object in the division. He was to return in time to make the final speech in the concluding Liberal meeting of the campaign, which was to be held that night, with the help of some half-dozen other members of Parliament, in the Dunscombe Corn Exchange.
A body of his supporters, gathered in the market-place, cheered him madly as the coach set off. Marsham stopped the horses for a minute outside the office of the local paper. The weekly issue came out that afternoon. It was handed up to him, and the coach rattled on.
McEwart, who was sitting beside him, opened it, and presently gave a low involuntary whistle of dismay. Marsham looked round.
"What's the matter?"
McEwart would have gladly flung the paper away. But looking round him he saw that several other persons on the top of the coach had copies, and that whispering consternation had begun.
He saw nothing for it but to hand the paper to Marsham. "This is playing it pretty low down!" he said, pointing to an item in large letters on the first page.
Marsham handed the reins to the groom beside him and took the paper. He saw, printed in full, Barrington's curt letter to himself on the subject of the Herald article, and below it the jubilant and scathing comments of the Tory editor.
He read both carefully, and gave the paper back to McEwart. "That decides the election," he said, calmly. McEwart's face assented.
Marsham, however, never showed greater pluck than at the Hartingfield meeting. It was a rowdy and disgraceful business, in which from beginning to end he scarcely got a hearing for more than three sentences at a time. A shouting mob of angry men, animated by passions much more than political, held him at bay. But on this occasion he never once lost his temper; he caught the questions and insults hurled at him, and threw them back with unfailing skill; and every now and then, at some lull in the storm, he made himself heard, and to good purpose. His courage and coolness propitiated some and exasperated others.