by writing to
his wife, and the sympathies of the world, he thought, would be with
him. To give him his due, it must be owned that he had no personal
fear as to the encounter.

That night Arthur Fletcher had gone over to Greshamsbury, and on the
following morning he returned with Mr. Gresham. "For heaven's sake,
look at that!" he said, handing the letter to his friend.

"Did you ever write to his wife?" asked Gresham, when he read it.

"Yes;--I did. All this is dreadful to me;--dreadful. Well;--you know
how it used to be with me. I need not go into all that; need I?"

"Don't say a word more than you think necessary."

"When you asked me to stand for the place I had not heard that he
thought of being a candidate. I wrote and told her so, and told her
also that had I known it before I would not have come here."

"I don't quite see that," said Gresham.

"Perhaps not;--perhaps I was a fool. But we needn't go into that.
At any rate there was no insult to him. I wrote in the simplest
language."

"Looking at it all round I think you had better not have written."

"You wouldn't say so if you saw the letter. I'm sure you wouldn't.
I had known her all my life. My brother is married to her cousin.
Oh heavens! we had been all but engaged. I would have done anything
for her. Was it not natural that I should tell her? As far as the
language was concerned the letter was one to be read at Charing
Cross."

"He says that she was annoyed and insulted."

"Impossible! It was a letter that any man might have written to any
woman."

"Well;--you have got to take care of yourself at any rate. What will
you do?"

"What ought I to do?"

"Go to the police." Mr. Gresham had himself once, when young,
thrashed a man who had offended him and had then thought himself much
aggrieved because the police had been called in. But that had been
twenty years ago, and Mr. Gresham's opinions had been matured and,
perhaps, corrected by age.

"No; I won't do that," said Arthur Fletcher.

"That's what you ought to do."

"I couldn't do that."

"Then take no notice of the letter and carry a fairly big stick. It
should be big enough to hurt him a good deal, but not to do him any
serious damage." At that moment an agent came in with news of the
man's retirement from the contest. "Has he left the town?" asked
Gresham. No;--he had not left the town, nor had he been seen by any
one that morning. "You had better let me go out and get the stick,
be