on the 8th—­Randolph despatches it, but the earl writes it.  So with the disposal of the jewels in the apartment on the 9th.  There had been some burglaries in the neighbourhood, and the suspicion at once arises in the mind of the crude reasoner:  Could Randolph—­finding now that Cibras has “left the country,” that, in fact, the tool he had expected to serve his ends has failed him—­could he have thus brought those jewels there, and thus warned the servants of their presence, in the hope that the intelligence might so get abroad and lead to a burglary, in the course of which his father might lose his life?  There are evidences, you know, tending to show that the burglary did actually at last take place, and the suspicion is, in view of that, by no means unreasonable.  And yet, militating against it, is our knowledge that it was Lord Pharanx who “chose” to gather the jewels round him; that it was in his presence that Randolph drew the attention of the servant to them.  In the matter, at least, of the little political comedy the son seems to have acted alone; but you surely cannot rid yourself of the impression that the radical speeches, the candidature, and the rest of it, formed all of them only a very elaborate, and withal clumsy, set of preliminaries to the class.  Anything, to make the perspective, the sequence of that seem natural.  But in the class, at any rate, we have the tacit acquiescence, or even the cooperation of Lord Pharanx.  You have described the conspiracy of quiet which, for some reason or other, was imposed on the household; in that reign of silence the bang of a door, the fall of a plate, becomes a domestic tornado.  But have you ever heard an agricultural labourer in clogs or heavy boots ascend a stair?  The noise is terrible.  The tramp of an army of them through the house and overhead, probably jabbering uncouthly together, would be insufferable.  Yet Lord Pharanx seems to have made no objection; the novel institution is set up in his own mansion, in an unusual part of it, probably against his own principles; but we hear of no murmur from him.  On the fatal day, too, the calm of the house is rudely broken by a considerable commotion in Randolph’s room just overhead, caused by his preparation for “a journey to London.”  But the usual angry remonstrance is not forthcoming from the master.  And do you not see how all this more than acquiescence of Lord Pharanx in the conduct of his son deprives that conduct of half its significance, its intrinsic suspiciousness?

’A hasty reasoner then would inevitably jump to the conclusion that Randolph was guilty of something—­some evil intention—­though of precisely what he would remain in doubt.  But a more careful reasoner would pause:  he would reflect that as the father was implicated in those acts, and as he was innocent of any such intention, so might possibly, even probably, be the son.  This, I take it, has been the view of the officials, whose logic is probably