“No, no; certainly not.  No one thinks of defending himself to a newspaper except an ass;—­unless it be some fellow who wants to have his name puffed.  You may write what’s as true as the gospel, but they’ll know how to make fun of it.”

Johnny, therefore, gave up his idea of an indignant letter to the editor, but he felt that he was bound to give some explanation of the whole matter to Lord De Guest.  The affair had happened as he was coming from the earl’s house, and all his own concerns had now been made so much a matter of interest to his kind friend, that he thought that he could not with propriety leave the earl to learn from the newspapers either the facts or the falsehoods.  And, therefore, before he left his office he wrote the following letter:—­

   INCOME-TAX OFFICE, December 29, 186—.

   MY LORD,—­

He thought a good deal about the style in which he ought to address the peer, never having hitherto written to him.  He began, “My dear Lord,” on one sheet of paper, and then put it aside, thinking that it looked over-bold.

   MY LORD,—­

As you have been so very kind to me, I feel that I ought to tell you what happened the other morning at the railway station, as I was coming back from Guestwick.  That scoundrel Crosbie got into the same carriage with me at the Barchester Junction, and sat opposite to me all the way up to London.  I did not speak a word to him, or he to me; but when he got out at the Paddington Station, I thought I ought not to let him go away, so I—­I can’t say that I thrashed him as I wished to do, but I made an attempt, and I did give him a black eye.  A whole quantity of policemen got round us, and I hadn’t a fair chance.  I know you will think that I was wrong, and perhaps I was; but what could I do when he sat opposite to me there for two hours, looking as though he thought himself the finest fellow in all London?

They’ve put a horrible paragraph into one of the newspapers saying that I got so “flogged” that I haven’t been able to stir since.  It is an atrocious falsehood, as is all the rest of the newspaper account.  I was not touched.  He was not nearly so bad a customer as the bull, and seemed to take it all very quietly.  I must acknowledge, though, that he didn’t get such a beating as he deserved.

Your friend Sir R. B. sent for me this morning, and told me I was a felon.  I didn’t seem to care much for that, for he might as well have called me a murderer or a burglar, but I shall care very much indeed if I have made you angry with me.  But what I most fear is the anger of some one else,—­at Allington.

   Believe me to be, my Lord,

   Yours very much obliged and most sincerely,

   JOHN EAMES.