; it came in somehow.
I watch the department that I once belonged to with the eye of a lynx.
Well, I shall look out for you and give you a hand if I can, always
supposing it would annoy the Government--any Government--I don't care
what."

Mr. Heron looked at him with wonder and incredulity.

"Terrible lack of principle, you think? Not a bit of it; I'm a strong
politician; I stick to my side through thick and thin. But in their
management of departments, you know--contracts, and all
that--governments are all the same; the natural enemies of man. Well, I
hope to see you. I am going to have a sleep. Let me give you my
address--though in any case I think we are certain to meet."

They parted with blunt expression of friendly inclination on the one
side and a doubtful, half-reluctant acknowledgment on the other. Heron
remained standing in his balcony looking at the changes of the moonlight
on the silent streets and thinking of his career and his grievance.

The nearer he came to England the colder his hopes seemed to grow. Now
upon the threshold of the country he had so longed to reach, he was
inclined to linger and loiter and to put off his entrance. Everything
that was so easy and clear a few thousand miles off began to show itself
perplexed and difficult. "When shall I be there?" he used to ask himself
on his homeward journey. "What have I come for?" he began to ask himself
now.

Times had indeed changed very suddenly with Victor Heron. He had come
into the active world perhaps rather prematurely. When very young, under
the guidance of an energetic and able father who had been an
administrator of some distinction in England's service among her
dependencies, he had made himself somewhat conspicuous in one of the
colonies; and when an opportunity occurred, after his father's death, of
offering him a considerable position, the Government appointed him to
the administration of a new settlement. It is hardly necessary for us to
go any deeper into the story of his grievance than he has already gone
himself in a few words. Except as an illustration of his character, we
have not much to do with the story of his career as an administrator. It
was a very small business altogether; a quarrel in a far off, lately
appropriated, and almost wholly insignificant scrap of England's
domains. Probably Mr. Heron was in the wrong, for he had been stimulated
wholly by a chivalrous enthusiasm for the honor of England's principles
and a ke