an appeared at first to be his way. After a while he
said, in his usual style of blunt but not unkind inquiry--

"Any of your people living in London?"

"No--in fact, I haven't any people in England--few relations now left
anywhere."

"Like Melchisedek, eh? Well, I don't know that he was the most to be
pitied of men. You have friends enough, I suppose?"

"Not friends exactly--acquaintances enough, I dare say--people to call
on, people who remember one's name and who ask one to dinner. But I
don't know that I shall have much time for cultivating acquaintanceships
in the way of society."

"Why so? What are you going to London to do?"

"To get a hearing, of course. To make the whole thing known. To show
that I was in the right, and that I only did what the honor of England
demanded. I trust to England."

"What's England got to do with it? England is only so many men and women
and children all concerned in their own affairs, and not caring twopence
about you and me and our wrongs. Besides, who has accused you? Who has
found fault with you? Your time is out, and there's an end."

"But they have dropped me down--they think to crush me."

"If they do, it will be by severely letting you alone; and what can you
do against that? You can't quarrel with a man merely because he ceases
to invite you to dinner, and that's about the way of it."

"I'll fight this out for all that."

"You'll soon get tired of it. It's beating the air, you know. Of course,
if you want to annoy the Government, you could easily get some of us to
take up your case--no difficulty about that--and make you the hero of a
grievance and a debate, and so on."

"I want nothing of the kind! I don't want any one to trouble himself
about me, and I don't care to be taken in hand by any one. If Englishmen
will not listen to a plain statement of right, why then----But I know
they will."

The conviction itself was expressed in the tone of one who by its very
assertion protests against a rising doubt and tries to stifle it.

"Very good," said the other. "Try it on. We shall soon see. I have a
sort of interest in the matter, for I had a grievance myself, and I have
still, only I went about things in a different way--looking for redress,
I mean."

"What did you do?"

"It's a longish story, and quite a different line from yours, and it
would bore you to hear, even if you understood it. I got into the House
and made myself a nuisance. I put money in my purse