And in Moneida, upon polling-days, he still, as Alec said, “made trouble.”  Perhaps it would be more to the fact to say that he presented the elements of which trouble is made.  Civilization had given him a vote, not with his coat and trousers, but shortly after; and he had not yet learned to keep it anywhere but in his pocket, whence the transfer was easy, and could be made in different ways.  The law contemplated only one, the straight drop into the ballot-box; but the “boys” had other views.  The law represented one level of political sentiment, the boys represented another; both parties represented the law, both parties were represented by the boys; and on the occasion of the South Fox election the boys had been active in Moneida.  There are, as we know, two kinds of activity on these occasions, one being set to observe the other; and Walter Winter’s boys, while presumably neglecting no legitimate opportunity of their own, claimed to have been highly successful in detecting the methods of the other side.

The Indians owed their holdings, their allowances, their school, and their protecting superintendent, Squire Ormiston, to a Conservative Government.  It made a grateful bond of which a later Conservative Government was not, perhaps, unaware, when it added the ballot to its previous benefits.  The Indians, therefore, on election-days, were supposed to “go solid” for the candidate in whom they had been taught to see good will.  If they did not go quite solid, the other side might point to the evolution of the political idea in every dissentient—­a gladdening spectacle, indeed, on which, however, the other side seldom showed any desire to dwell.

Hitherto the desires and intentions of the “Reserve” had been exemplified in its superintendent.  Squire Ormiston had never led his wards to the polls—­there were strong reasons against that.  But the squire made no secret of his politics, either before or, unluckily, after he changed them.  The Indians had always known that they were voting on the same side as “de boss.”  They were likely, the friends of Mr Winter thought, to know now that they were voting on a different side.  This was the secret of Mr Winter’s friends’ unusual diligence on voting-day in Moneida.  The mere indication of a wish on the part of the superintendent would constitute undue influence in the eye of the law.  The squire was not the most discreet of men—­often before it had been the joke of Conservative councils how near the old man had come to making a case for the Grits in connection with this chief or that.  I will not say that he was acquainted with the famous letter from Queen Victoria, affectionately bidding her Indian children to vote for the Conservative candidate.  But perhaps he had not adhered to the strictest interpretation of the law which gave him fatherly influence in everything pertaining to his red-skinned charges’ interests temporal and spiritual, excepting only their sacred privilege of the ballot.  He may even have held