sits there before us is the Croesus Club, a
select assemblage of between six and seven
hundred members, who drop down here to
levy taxes, and job generally, in the interval
between dinner and bed."

"Are they—are they there now?"
asked Joyce, eagerly, peering with
outstretched neck at the building before him.

"Now? No, of course not, man! They're
away at their own devices, nine-tenths of
them breaking the laws which they helped
to make, and all enjoying themselves, and
wondering what the devil people find to
grumble at!"

"One of the governors of the old school,
down, down at Helmingham"—a large
knot swelled in Joyce's throat as he said
the word, and nearly choked him; never
before had he felt the place so lar away or
the days spent there so long removed from
his then life—"was a member of Parliament,
I think! Lord Beachcroft. Did you
ever hear of him?"

The old man smiled sardonically. "Hear
of him, man? There's not one of them
that has made his mark, or that is likely to
make his mark in any way, that I don't
know by sight, or that I haven't heard
speak. I know Lord Beachcroft well enough;
he's a philanthropist, wants camphorated
chalk tooth-powder for the paupers, and
horse exercise for the convicts. Registered
among the noodles, ranks A1, weakly
built, leaden-headed, and wants an
experienced keeper!"

"That doctrine would have been taken as
heresy at Helmingham! I know he came
there once on our speech-day to deliver the
prizes, and the boys all cheered him to the
echo!"

"The boys! of course they did! The
child is father to the man! I forgot, people
don't read Wordsworth now-a-days, but
that's what he says, and he and Tennyson
are the only poet-philosophers that have
risen amongst us for many years, and boys
shout, as men would, at the mere sight, at
the mere taste of a lord! How they like to
roll 'your lordship' round their mouths,
and fear lest they should lose the slightest
atom of its flavour! Not that the boys did
wrong in cheering Lord Beachcroft! He's
harmless enough and well-meaning, I'm
sure, and stands well up among the noodles.
And it's better to stand anywhere amongst
them than to be affiliated to the other
party!"

"The other party? Who are they, Mr.
Byrne?"

"The rogues, lad, the rogues! Rogues
and noodles make up the blessed lot of
senators sitting in your gimcrack palace,
who vote away your birthright and mine,
tax the sweat of millions, bow to Gold Stick
and kiss Black Rod's coat-tails, send our
fleets to defend Von Sourkraut's honour, or
our soldiers to sicken of jungle fever in
pursuit of the rebel Lollum Dha's
adversaries! Parliament? Representatives of
the people? Very much! My gallant friend,
all pipeclay and padded breast, who won't
hear of the army estimates being reduced;
my learned friend, who brings all his
forensic skill and all his power of tongue-
fence, first learned in three-guinea briefs at
the Old Bailey, and now educated up into
such silvery eloquence, into play for the
chance of a judgeship and a knighthood;
the volatile Irish member, who subsides
finally into the consulate of Zanzibar; the
honourable member, who, having in his
early youth swept out a shop at Loughboro',
and arrived in London with eightpence, has
accumulated millions, and is, of course, a
strong Tory, with but two desires in life, to
keep down 'the people,' and to obtain a
card for his wife for the Premier's Saturday
evenings—these are the representatives of
the people for you! Rogues and noodles,
noodles and rogues. Don't you like the
picture?"

"I should hate it, if I believed in it, Mr.
Byrne!" said Joyce, moving away, "but I
don't! You won't think me rude or unkind,
but—but I've been brought up in so widely
different a faith. I've been taught to hold
in such reverence all that I hear you deny,
that——"

"Stick to it, lad! hold to it while you
can!" said the old man, kindly, laying his
hand on his companion's arm. "My
doctrines are strong meat for babes—too strong,
I dare say—and you're but a toothless infant
yet in these things, anyhow! So much the
better for you. I recollect a story of some
man who said he was never happy or well
after he was told he had a liver! Go on as
long as you can in pleasant ignorance of
the fact that you have a political liver.
Some day it will become torpid and sluggish,
and then—then come and talk to old Dr.
Byrne. Till then, he won't attempt to
alarm you, depend upon it!"

Not very long to be deferred was the day
in which the political patient was to come
to the political physician for advice and for
treatment.

Beaufort-square looked hideously dull as
Lord Hetherington drove through it on his