to be passed before a new
election took place. The bill was ready, and should be read for the
first time on the next night, if the House were willing. The House
was willing, though there were very many recalcitrant Irish members.
The Irish members made loud opposition, and then twitted Mr. Gresham
with his promise that he would not go on with his bill, if opposition
were made. But, nevertheless, he did go on, and the measure was
hurried through the two Houses in a week. Our hero who still sat for
Loughshane, but who was never to sit for Loughshane again, gave what
assistance he could to the Government, and voted for the measure
which deprived Loughshane for ever of its parliamentary honours.

"And very dirty conduct I think it was," said Lord Tulla, when he
discussed the subject with his agent. "After being put in for the
borough twice, almost free of expense, it was very dirty." It never
occurred to Lord Tulla that a member of Parliament might feel himself
obliged to vote on such a subject in accordance with his judgment.

This Irish Reform Bill was scrambled through the two Houses, and
then the session was over. The session was over, and they who knew
anything of the private concerns of Mr. Phineas Finn were aware that
he was about to return to Ireland, and did not intend to reappear on
the scene which had known him so well for the last five years. "I
cannot tell you how sad it makes me," said Mr. Monk.

"And it makes me sad too," said Phineas. "I try to shake off the
melancholy, and tell myself from day to day that it is unmanly. But
it gets the better of me just at present."

"I feel quite certain that you will come back among us again," said
Mr. Monk.

"Everybody tells me so; and yet I feel quite certain that I shall
never come back,--never come back with a seat in Parliament. As my
old tutor, Low, has told me scores of times, I began at the wrong
end. Here I am, thirty years of age, and I have not a shilling in the
world, and I do not know how to earn one."

"Only for me you would still be receiving ever so much a year, and
all would be pleasant," said Mr. Monk.

"But how long would it have lasted? The first moment that Daubeny got
the upper hand I should have fallen lower than I have fallen now. If
not this year, it would have been the next. My only comfort is in
this,--that I have done the thing myself, and have not been turned
out." To the very last, however, Mr. Monk continued to express his
opinion t