A shot rang out in the evening air. Hyacinth stooped down from his perch and put his finger on the bolt. The sow pressed furiously against the door.

‘Bang!’ came another shot.

Hyacinth wriggled back, and sent a short ladder down through the window of the inner sty.

‘Now you can come up, you unclean little blighters,’ he sang out; ‘my daddy’s got in, not yours. Hurry up, I can’t keep the sow waiting much longer. And don’t you jolly well come butting into any election again where I’m on the job.’

In the reaction that set in after the deliverance furious recriminations were indulged in by the lately opposed candidates, their women folk, agents, and party helpers. A recount was demanded, but failed to establish the fact that the Colonial Secretary had obtained a majority. Altogether the election left a legacy of soreness behind it, apart from any that was experienced by Hyacinth in person.

‘It is the last time I shall let him go to an election,’ exclaimed his mother.

‘There I think you are going to extremes,’ said Mrs Pantstreppon; ‘if there should be a general election in Mexico I think you might safely let him go there, but I doubt whether out English politics are suited to the rough and tumble of an angel-child.’