esman winked knowingly. "Merely the South-Eastern vote,"
he whispered. "Come, is it a bargain at that?"

"Done!" was the quick rejoinder. They grasped hands.

"Show this gentleman to a four-wheeler," said the ex-Premier.

So they parted. But as the Grand Old Politician turned towards the
supper-room there was a fine triumphant lustre beaming in his eye, for
he knew, that if he had possibly betrayed his country, he had at least
squared the Railway Company. He had made the _compact_!

VOL. II.--PAID IN FULL.

The country was about to face a great crisis in its history. Yet, as the
year 1894 opened, there were little evidences of the approaching storm.
It is true that the Gladstone Cabinet were still in power, and were
passing exasperating measures. But this was nothing new. Last year they
had abolished Compulsory Vaccination, and had passed the Country Estates
Popular Appropriation Act. They had inaugurated the first Session of the
present one by suppressing the Volunteer Movement, and cutting down the
Naval and Military votes respectively to the modest figure of L2,000,000
a year; and they pointed to the Channel Tunnel, now opened about sixteen
months, for a triumphant vindication of these Imperial economies. They
argued that a country that could pour a perpetual stream of Cook's
Tourists night and day over to the Continent, had given a guarantee for
preserving International peace such as would warrant it in reducing the
expense for its defences to a pecuniary minimum; and, though they met
with some opposition from the Permanent Departments, and were hotly
criticised by an angry mob of naval and military men, who found
themselves, at a moment's notice, both thrown out of work, and deprived
of their pay, they, nevertheless, carried their point, and effected the
proposed reductions. But a thunder-clap was about to fall upon the
unsuspecting country from a blue sky, and the Channel Tunnel, which had
inspired its misguided leaders with a baseless confidence, was destined
to inflict the shock.

It became known in London suddenly on the morning of the Tuesday in the
Easter Recess that the approaches to the Tunnel had been suddenly seized
by a hostile French force that had landed by the night-mail disguised as
tourists, and that the key of the apparatus destined to flood it in any
case of emergency, was not forthcoming, the Chairman of the Company, who
had charge of it, having suddenly disappeared without leaving his
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