d friend, and learned
what was being said and what was being done in and about the borough.
Mr. Gresham was a man, not as yet quite forty years of age, very
popular, with a large family, of great wealth, and master of the
county hounds. His father had been an embarrassed man, with a large
estate; but this Gresham had married a lady with immense wealth,
and had prospered in the world. He was not an active politician. He
did not himself care for Parliament, or for the good things which
political power can give, and was on this account averse to the
Coalition. He thought that Sir Orlando Drought and the others were
touching pitch and had defiled themselves. But he was conscious that
in so thinking he was one of but a small minority; and, bad as the
world around him certainly was, terrible as had been the fall of the
glory of old England, he was nevertheless content to live without
loud grumbling as long as the farmers paid him their rent, and the
labourers in his part of the country did not strike for wages, and
the land when sold would fetch thirty years' purchase. He had not
therefore been careful to ascertain that Arthur Fletcher would pledge
himself to oppose the Coalition before he proffered his assistance
in this matter of the borough. It would not be easy to find such
a candidate, or perhaps possible to bring him in when found. The
Fletchers had always been good Conservatives, and were proper people
to be in Parliament. A Conservative in Parliament is, of course,
obliged to promote a great many things which he does not really
approve. Mr. Gresham quite understood that. You can't have tests and
qualifications, rotten boroughs and the divine right of kings, back
again. But as the glorious institutions of the country are made to
perish, one after the other, it is better that they should receive
the coup de grace tenderly from loving hands than be roughly
throttled by Radicals. Mr. Gresham would thank his stars that he
could still preserve foxes down in his own country, instead of doing
any of this dirty work,--for let the best be made of such work,
still it was dirty,--and was willing, now as always, to give his
assistance, and if necessary to spend a little money, to put a
Fletcher into Parliament and to keep a Lopez out.

There was to be a third candidate. That was the first news that
Fletcher heard. "It will do us all the good in the world," said Mr.
Gresham. "The Rads in the borough are not satisfied with Mr. Lope