Captain Baskelett heard of this poaching case at Steynham, where he had to appear in person when he was in want of cheques, and the Bevisham dinner furnished an excuse for demanding one.  He would have preferred a positive sum annually.  Mr. Romfrey, however, though he wrote his cheques out like the lord he was by nature, exacted the request for them; a system that kept the gallant gentleman on his good behaviour, probably at a lower cost than the regular stipend.  In handing the cheque to Cecil Baskelett, Mr. Romfrey spoke of a poacher, of an old poaching family called the Dicketts, who wanted punishment and was to have it, but Mr. Romfrey’s local lawyer had informed him that the man Shrapnel was, as usual, supplying the means of defence.  For his own part, Mr. Romfrey said, he had no objection to one rascal’s backing another, and Shrapnel might hit his hardest, only perhaps Nevil might somehow get mixed up in it, and Nevil was going on quietly now—­he had in fact just done capitally in lassoing with a shot of the telegraph a splendid little Jersey bull that a Yankee was after:  and on the whole it was best to try to keep him quiet, for he was mad about that man Shrapnel; Shrapnel was his joss:  and if legal knocks came of this business Nevil might be thinking of interfering:  ’Or he and I may be getting to exchange a lot of shindy letters,’ Mr. Romfrey said.  ’Tell him I take Shrapnel just like any other man, and don’t want to hear apologies, and I don’t mix him up in it.  Tell him if he likes to have an explanation from me, I’ll give it him when he comes here.  You can run over to Holdesbury the morning after your dinner.’

Captain Baskelett said he would go.  He was pleased with his cheque at the time, but hearing subsequently that Nevil was coming to Steynham to meet Colonel Halkett and his daughter, he became displeased, considering it a very silly commission.  The more he thought of it the more ridiculous and unworthy it appeared.  He asked himself and Lord Palmet also why he should have to go to Nevil at Holdesbury to tell him of circumstances that he would hear of two or three days later at Steynham.  There was no sense in it.  The only conclusion for him was that the scheming woman Culling had determined to bring down every man concerned in the Bevisham election, and particularly Mr. Romfrey, on his knees before Nevil.  Holdesbury had been placed at his disposal, and the use of the house in London, which latter would have been extremely serviceable to Cecil as a place of dinners to the Parliament of Great Britain in lieu of the speech-making generally expected of Members, and not so effectively performed.  One would think the baron had grown afraid of old Nevil!  He had spoken as if he were.

Cecil railed unreservedly to Lord Palmet against that woman ’Mistress Culling,’ as it pleased him to term her, and who could be offended by his calling her so?  His fine wit revelled in bestowing titles that were at once batteries directed upon persons he hated, and entrenchments for himself.