forgotten fell out of the inner
pocket. He raised it--irresolute. Should he tear it up, and throw the
fragments away?

No. He could not bring himself to do it. It was as though Ferrier, lying
still and cold at Lytchett, would know of it--as though the act would do
some roughness to the dead.

He went into his sitting-room, found an empty drawer in his
writing-table, thrust in the newspaper, and closed the drawer.

CHAPTER XX

"I regard this second appeal to West Brookshire as an insult!" said the
Vicar of Beechcote, hotly. "If Mr. Marsham must needs accept an office
that involved re-election he might have gone elsewhere. I see there is
already a vacancy by death--and a Liberal seat, too--in Sussex. _We_
told him pretty plainly what we thought of him last time."

"And now I suppose you will turn him out?" asked the doctor, lazily. In
the beatitude induced by a completed article and an afternoon smoke, he
was for the moment incapable of taking a tragic view either of Marsham's
shortcomings or his prospects.

"Certainly, we shall turn him out."

"Ah!--a Labor candidate?" said the doctor, showing a little more energy.

Whereupon the Vicar, with as strong a relish for the _primeur_ of an
important piece of news as any secular fighter, described a meeting held
the night before in one of the mining villages, at which he had been a
speaker. The meeting had decided to run a miners' candidate; expenses
had been guaranteed; and the resolution passed meant, according to
Lavery, that Marsham would be badly beaten, and that Colonel Simpson,
his Conservative opponent, would be handsomely presented with a seat in
Parliament, to which his own personal merits had no claim whatever.

"But that we put up with," said the Vicar, grimly. "The joy of turning
out Marsham is compensation."

The doctor turned an observant eye on his companion's clerical coat.

"Shall we hear these sentiments next Sunday from the pulpit?" he asked,
mildly.

The Vicar had the grace to blush slightly.

"I say, no doubt, more than I should say," he admitted. Then he rose,
buttoning his long coat down his long body deliberately, as though by
the action he tried to restrain the surge within; but it overflowed all
the same. "I know now," he said, with a kindling eye, holding out a
gaunt hand in farewell, "what our Lord meant by sending, not
peace--but a sword!"

"So, no doubt, did Torquemada!" replied the doctor, surveying him.

The Vicar rose