Added to all this was a private rankling, sore in regard to Goarly and Bearside.  He had now learned nearly all the truth about Goarly, and had learned also that Bearside had known the whole when he had last visited that eminent lawyer’s office.  Goarly had deserted his supporters and had turned evidence against Scrobby, his partner in iniquity.  That Goarly was a rascal the Senator had acknowledged.  So far the general opinion down in Rufford had been correct.  But he could get nobody to see,—­or at any rate could get nobody to acknowledge,—­that the rascality of Goarly had had nothing to do with the question as he had taken it up.  The man’s right to his own land,—­his right to be protected from pheasants and foxes, from horses and hounds,—­was not lessened by the fact that he was a poor ignorant squalid dishonest wretch.  Mr. Gotobed had now received a bill from Bearside for 42l. 7s. 9d. for costs in the case, leaving after the deduction of 15l. already paid a sum of 27l. 7s. 9d. stated to be still due.  And this was accompanied by an intimation that as he, Mr. Gotobed, was a foreigner soon about to leave the country, Mr. Bearside must request that his claim might be settled quite at once.  No one could be less likely than our Senator to leave a foreign country without paying his bills.  He had quarrelled with Morton,—­who also at this time was too ill to have given him much assistance.  Though he had become acquainted with half Dillsborough, there was nobody there to whom he could apply.  Thus he was driven to employ a London attorney, and the London attorney told him that he had better pay Bearside;—­the Senator remembering at the time that he would also have to pay the London attorney for his advice.  He gave this second lawyer authority to conclude the matter, and at last Bearside accepted 20 pounds.  When the London attorney refused to take anything for his trouble, the Senator felt such conduct almost as an additional grievance.  In his existing frame of mind he would sooner have expended a few more dollars than be driven to think well of anything connected with English law.

It was immediately after he had handed over the money in liquidation of Bearside’s claim that he sat down to write a further letter to his friend and correspondent Josiah Scroome.  His letter was not written in the best of tempers; but still, through it all, there was a desire to be just, and an anxiety to abstain from the use of hard phrases.  The letter was as follows;—­

Fenton’s Hotel, St. James’ Street, London,
Feb. 12, 187-.

My Dear Sir,

Since I last wrote I have had much to trouble me and little perhaps to compensate me for my trouble.  I told you, I think, in one of my former letters that wherever I went I found myself able to say what I pleased as to the peculiarities of this very peculiar people.  I am not now going to contradict what I said then.  Wherever I go I do speak out, and my eyes are still in my head and my head is on my