It will not do to push a comparison too far, and Mr. Hamilton Tooting, of course, ought not to be made to act the part of Tarquin the Proud.  Like Tarquin, however, he had been deposed—­one of those fatuous acts which the wisest will commit.  No more could the Honourable Hilary well be likened to Pandora, for he only opened the box wide enough to allow one mischievous sprite to take wings—­one mischievous sprite that was to prove a host.  Talented and invaluable lieutenant that he was, Mr. Tooting had become an exile, to explain to any audience who should make it worth his while the mysterious acts by which the puppets on the stage were moved, and who moved them; who, for instance, wrote the declamation which his Excellency Asa Gray recited as his own.  Mr. Tooting, as we have seen, had a remarkable business head, and combined with it—­as Austen Vane remarked—­the rare instinct of the Norway rat which goes down to the sea in ships—­when they are safe.  Burrowing continually amongst the bowels of the vessel, Mr. Tooting knew the weak timbers better than the Honourable Hilary Vanes who thought the ship as sound as the day Augustus Flint had launched her.  But we have got a long way from Horatius in our imagery.

Little birds flutter around the capital, picking up what crumbs they may.  One of them, occasionally fed by that humanitarian, the Honourable Jacob Botcher, whispered a secret that made the humanitarian knit his brows.  He was the scout that came flying (if by a burst of imagination we can conceive the Honourable Jacob in this aerial act)—­came flying to the Consul in room Number Seven with the news that Mr. Hamilton Tooting had been detected on two evenings slipping into the Duncan house.  But the Consul—­strong man that he was—­merely laughed.  The Honourable Elisha Jane did some scouting on his own account.  Some people are so small as to be repelled by greatness, to be jealous of high gifts and power, and it was perhaps inevitable that a few of the humbler members whom Mr. Crewe had entertained should betray his hospitality, and misinterpret his pure motives.

It was a mere coincidence, perhaps, that after Mr. Jane’s investigation the intellectual concentration which one of the committees had bestowed on two of Mr. Crewe’s bills came to an end.  These bills, it is true, carried no appropriation, and, were, respectively, the acts to incorporate the State Economic League and the Children’s Charities Association.  These suddenly appeared in the House one morning, with favourable recommendations, and, mirabile dicta, the end of the day saw them through the Senate and signed by the governor.  At last Mr. Crewe by his Excellency had stamped the mark of his genius on the statute books, and the Honourable Jacob Botcher, holding out an olive branch, took the liberty of congratulating him.

A vainer man, a lighter character than Humphrey Crewe, would have been content to have got something; and let it rest at that.  Little Mr. Butcher or Mr. Speaker Doby, with his sorrowful smile, guessed the iron hand within the velvet glove of the Leith statesman; little they knew the man they were dealing with.  Once aroused, he would not be pacified by bribes of cheap olive branches and laurels.  When the proper time came, he would fling down the gauntlet—­before Rome itself, and then let Horatius and his friends beware.