“Ay, Toddy Tam, are ye there, man?” cried Geordie with a malignant grin. “What was you and the Clique doin’ at Nanse Finlayson’s on Friday nicht?”
“What was it, Geordie? What was it?” cried a hundred voices.
“Am I to be interrupted by a natural?” cried Gills, looking, however, considerably flushed in the face.
“What hae ye dune wi’ the notes, Tam, that the lang chield up by there gied ye? And whaur’s your freends, Shanks and M’Auslan? See that ye steek close the window neist time, ma man!” cried Geordie with demoniac ferocity.
This was quite enough for the mob, who seldom require any excuse for a display of their hereditary privileges. A perfect hurricane of hissing and of yelling arose, and Gills, though he fought like a hero, was at last forced to retire from the contest. Had Geordie Dowie’s windpipe been within his grasp at that moment, I would not have insured for any amount the life of the perfidious spy.
Sholto Douglas was proposed and seconded amidst great cheering, and then Pozzlethwaite rose to speak. I do not very well recollect what he said, for I had quite enough to do in thinking about myself; and the Honourable Paul would have conferred a material obligation upon me, if he had talked for an hour longer. At length my turn came.
“Electors of Dreepdaily!”—
That was the whole of my speech—at least the whole of it that was audible to any one human being. Humboldt, if I recollect right, talks in one of his travels of having somewhere encountered a mountain composed of millions of entangled snakes, whose hissing might have equalled that of the transformed legions of Pandemonium. I wish Humboldt, for the sake of scientific comparison, could have been upon the hustings that day! Certain I am, that the sibilation did not leave my ears for a fortnight afterwards, and even now, in my slumbers, I am haunted by a wilderness of asps! However, at the urgent entreaty of M’Corkindale, I went on for about ten minutes, though I was quivering in every limb, and as pale as a ghost; and in order that the public might not lose the benefit of my sentiments, I concluded by handing a copy of my speech, interlarded with fictitious cheers, to the reporter for the Dreepdaily Patriot. That document may still be seen by the curious in the columns of that impartial newspaper.
I will state this for Sholto Douglas, that he behaved like a perfect gentleman. There was in his speech no triumph over the discomfiture which the other candidates had received; on the contrary, he rather rebuked the audience for not having listened to us with greater patience. He then went on with his oration. I need hardly say it was a national one, and it was most enthusiastically cheered.