“Give it to him, Cap'en!” Saunders whispered, as he handed him a slip. “He's glowering at ye.”
The elder was indeed surveying the mariner, McNab, and Dunlop with a glance of comprehensive hostility over the top of his ballot. “See what I'm aboot!” his look said, as he folded the paper and tossed it into Saunders's hat.
“The auld deevil!” McNab whispered, as the minister unfolded the first ballot. “He'll soon slacken his gills.”
“That'll be one of oor ballots,” the cap'en hoarsely confided.
The minister was vigorously rubbing his glasses for a second perusal of the ballot, but when the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth were added to the first, his face became a study in astonishment. And presently his surprise was reflected by the congregation. For whereas three candidates were in nomination, the ballots were forming but two piles.
Whispers ran through the kirk; the cap'en nudged McNab.
“McCakeron must ha' swung all the Duncanites?”
“Ah,” Neil muttered. “An' that wad account for the stiff look o' the reptile. See the glare o't.”
They would have stiffened in astonishment could they have translated the “glare.” “Got the Duncanites, did ye?” the elder was thinking. “Bide a wee, bide a wee! He laughs best that laughs last.”
Saunders McClellan and his Devil alone sensed the inwardness of those two piles, and they held modest communion over it in the back of the kirk. “You may be ugly, but ye've served me well,” Saunders began.