uggle to get on to
solid ground. The Truth for me now. By God! nothing but the Truth!"

Barney Bill, sitting for-ward, hunched up, on the seat of the car, just
as he used to sit on the footboard of his van, twisted his head round.
"I'm not an eddicated person," said he, "although if I hadn't done a
bit of reading in my time I'd have gone dotty all by my lones in the
old 'bus, but I've come to one or two conclusions in my, so to speak,
variegated career, and one is that if you go one in that 'ere mad way
for Truth in Parliament, you'll be a bull in a china shop, and they'll
get sticks and dawgs to hustle you out. Sir Robert Peel, old Gladstone,
Dizzy, the whole lot of the old Yuns was up against it. They had to
compromise. It's compromise"--the old man dwelt lovingly, as usual, on
the literary word--"it's compromise you must have in Parliament."

"I'll see Parliament damned first!" cried Paul, his nerves on edge.

"You'll have to wait a long time, sonny," said Barney Bill, wagging a
sage head. "Parliament takes a lot of damning."

"Anyhow," said Paul, not eager to continue the argument, but
unconsciously caught in the drift of Barney Bill's philosophy, "my
private life isn't politics, and there's not going to be another lie in
my private life as long as I live."

The old man broke a short silence with a dry chuckle. "How it takes one
back!" he said reflectively. "Lor lumme! I can hear yer speaking
now--just in the same tone--the night what yer run away with me. Yer
hadn't a seat to yer breeches then, and now you've a seat in
Parliament." He chuckled again at his joke. "But"--he gripped the young
man's knee in his bony clasp--"you're just the same Paul, sonny, God
bless yer--and you'll come out straight all right. Here we are."

The car drew up before Silas Finn's house. They entered. Jane,
summoned, came down at once and met them in the dreadful dining-room,
where a simple meal was spread.

"I haven't heard--" she said.

"I'm in."

"I'm glad."

"My father--?" he asked curtly.

She looked at him wide-eyed for a second or two as he stood, his
fur-lined coat with astrachan collar thrown open, his hand holding a
soft felt hat on his hip, his absurdly beautiful head thrown back, to
casual glance the Fortunate Youth of a month or two ago. But to Jane's
jealous eye he was not even the man she had seen that afternoon. He
looked many years older. She confessed afterwards to surprise at not
finding his hair grey at t