Lettie had gone to stay with some friends until
the recent proceedings were over in one way or another, and Bent
himself, as soon as Cotherstone had left the court, had hurried away to
catch a train to the town in which she was temporarily staying in order
to tell her the news and bring her home. So the would-be doer-of-good
went back disappointed--and as he reached the hotel, Cotherstone and the
barrister emerged from it, parted at the door with evident great
cordiality, and went their several ways. And Cotherstone, passing the
man who had been to Bent's, stared him in the face and cut him dead.

"It's going to be war to the knife between Cotherstone and the town,"
remarked the ambassador, when he re-entered the big room and joined his
own circle. "He passed me just now as if I were one of the paving-stones
he trod on! And did you see his face as he went out?--egad, instead of
looking as if he'd had too much to drink, he looked too sober to please
me. You mind if something doesn't happen--yon fellow's desperate!"

"What should he be desperate about?" asked one of the group. "He's saved
his own neck!"

"It was that shouting at him when he came out that did it," observed
another man quietly. "He's the sort of man to resent aught like that. If
Cotherstone thinks public opinion's against him--well, we shall see!"

Cotherstone walked steadily away through the Market Place when he left
the barrister. Whatever the men in the big room might have thought, he
had not been indulging too freely in the little parlour. He had pressed
champagne on the group around him, but the amount he had taken himself
had not been great and it had pulled him together instead of
intoxicating him. And his excitement had suddenly died down, and he had
stopped what might have developed into a drinking bout by saying that he
must go home. And once outside, he made for his house, and as he went he
looked neither to right nor left, and if he met friend or acquaintance
his face became hard as flint.

Cotherstone, indeed, was burning and seething with indignation. The
taunts flung at him as he stood on the Town Hall steps, the looks turned
in his direction as he walked away with the convivially inclined
barrister, the expression on the faces of the men in the big room at the
Highmarket Arms--all these things had stung him to the quick. He knew,
whatever else he might have been, or was, he had proved a faithful
servant to the town. He had been a zealous