rather liked
him. He had made himself free of the office, and the clerks were
always glad to see him. It was understood that he said bitter things
in the House,--that was Major Magruder's line of business; but he
could be quite pleasant when he was asking questions of a private
secretary, or telling the news of the day to a senior clerk. As he
was now between seventy and eighty, and had been at the work for at
least twenty years, most of those concerned had allowed themselves
to think that he would ride his hobby harmlessly to the day of his
parliamentary death. But the drop from a house corner will hollow
a stone by its constancy, and Major Magruder at last persuaded the
House to grant him a Committee of Inquiry. Then there came to be
serious faces at the Colonial Office, and all the little pleasantries
of a friendly opposition were at an end. It was felt that the battle
must now become a real fight, and Secretary and Under-Secretary
girded up their loins.

Major Magruder was chairman of his own committee, and being a man
of a laborious turn of mind, much given to blue-books, very patient,
thoroughly conversant with the House, and imbued with a strong belief
in the efficacy of parliamentary questionings to carry a point, if
not to elicit a fact, had a happy time of it during this session.
He was a man who always attended the House from 4 p.m. to the time
of its breaking up, and who never missed a division. The slight
additional task of sitting four hours in a committee-room three days
a week, was only a delight the more,--especially as during those four
hours he could occupy the post of chairman. Those who knew Major
Magruder well did not doubt but that the Committee would sit for many
weeks, and that the whole theory of colonial government, or rather of
imperial control supervising such government, would be tested to the
very utmost. Men who had heard the old Major maunder on for years
past on his pet subject, hardly knew how much vitality would be found
in him when his maundering had succeeded in giving him a committee.

A Governor from one of the greater colonies had already been under
question for nearly a week, and was generally thought to have come
out of the fire unscathed by the flames of the Major's criticism.
This Governor had been a picked man, and he had made it appear that
the control of Downing Street was never more harsh and seldom less
refreshing and beautifying than a spring shower in April. No other