two in the morning before
Young and Windle had the grace to blow their sirens , and across the excited darkness of the town came the long familiar boom of the Murchison Stove Works . Every Liberal in Elgin who had any means of making a noise made it . From the window of the Association committee room their young fellow-townsman thanked them for the honour they had done him , while his mother sat in the cab he had brought her down in and applauded vigorously between tears , and his father took congratulations from a hundred friendly hands . They all went home in a torchlight procession , the band always playing , the tin whistles always performing ; and it was two in the morning before the occasion could in any sense be said to be over . Lights burned quite as late , however , in the Conservative committee room , where matters were being arranged to bark threateningly at the heels of victory next day . Victory looked like something that might be made to turn and parley . A majority of seventy was too small for finality .