vers every
word of their spoken evidence with suspicion. It will be like losing so
much of his heart's blood, but the old fellow will have to give way.'

'He never gave way in his life.'

'We'll make him begin.'

'I'll bet you a pony he don't.'

'I'll take the bet,' said the late Attorney-General. But as he did so he
looked round to see that not even a gamekeeper was near enough to hear
him.

On that Friday Bagwax was in a very melancholy state of mind at his
office, in spite of the brilliancy of his prospects with Miss Curlydown.
'I'll just come back to my old work,' he said to his future
father-in-law. 'There's nothing else for me to do.'

This was all as it should be, and would have been regarded a day or two
ago by Curlydown as simple justice. There had been quite enough of that
pottering over an old envelope, to the manifest inconvenience of himself
and others. But now the matter was altered. His was a paternal and an
affectionate heart, and he saw very plainly the pecuniary advantage of a
journey to Sydney. And he knew too that, in official life as well as
elsewhere, to those who have much, more is given. Now that Bagwax was to
him in the light of a son, he wished Bagwax to rise in the world. 'I
wouldn't give it up,' said he.

'But what would you do?'

'I'd stick to it like wax till they did something for me.'

'There's nothing to stick to.'

'I'd take it for granted I was going at once to Sydney. I'd get my
outfit, and, by George! I'd take my place.'

'I've told Sir John I wasn't going; and he said it wasn't necessary.'
As Bagwax told his sad tale he almost wept.

'I wouldn't mind that. I'd have it out of them somehow. Why is he to
have all the pay? No doubt it's been hundreds to him; and you've done
the work and got nothing.'

'When I asked him to get me sent, he said he'd no power;--not now it's
all so plain.' He turned his face down towards the desk to hide the tear
that now was, in truth, running down his face. 'But duty!' he said,
looking up again. 'Duty! England expects----. D--n it, who's going to
whimper? When I lay my head on my pillow at night and think that I, I,
Thomas Bagwax, have restored that nameless one to her babe and her lord,
I shall sleep even though that pillow be no better than a hard bolster.'

'Jemima will look after that,' said the father, laughing. 'But still I
wouldn't give it up. Never give a chance up,--they come so seldom. I'll
tell you what I should do;--I should