called there to speak as a master of his art of governing, he would in truth be examined as a servant, and probably as a servant who did not know his business.  Had his sojourn at home been in other respects happy, he might have been able to balance the advantage against the inquiry, but there was no such balancing for him now.  And, moreover, the expense of his own house in Manchester Street was so large that this journey, in a pecuniary point of view, would be of but little service to him.  So he went down to the House in an unhappy mood; and when he shook hands in one of the passages with his friend Osborne who was on the Committee, there was very little cordiality in his manner.  ’This is the most ungrateful thing I ever knew,’ said the Colonel to himself; ’I have almost disgraced myself by having this fellow brought home; and now he quarrels with me because that idiot, his son-in-law, has quarrelled with his wife.’  And Colonel Osborne really did feel that he was a martyr to the ingratitude of his friend.

The Committee had been convoked by the House in compliance with the eager desires of a certain ancient pundit of the constitution, who had been for many years a member, and who had been known as a stern critic of our colonial modes of government.  To him it certainly seemed that everything that was, was bad as regarded our national dependencies.  But this is so usually the state of mind of all parliamentary critics, it is so much a matter of course that the members who take up the army or the navy, guns, India, our relations with Spain, or workhouse management, should find everything to be bad, rotten, and dishonest, that the wrath of the member for Killicrankie against colonial peculation and idleness, was not thought much of in the open House.  He had been at the work for years, and the Colonial Office were so used to it that they rather liked him.  He had made himself free of the office, and the clerks were always glad to see him.  It was understood that he said bitter things in the House—­that was Major Magruder’s line of business; but he could be quite pleasant when he was asking questions of a private secretary, or telling the news of the day to a senior clerk.  As he was now between seventy and eighty, and had been at the work for at least twenty years, most of those concerned had allowed themselves to think that he would ride his hobby harmlessly to the day of his parliamentary death.  But the drop from a house corner will hollow a stone by its constancy, and Major Magruder at last persuaded the House to grant him a Committee of Inquiry.  Then there came to be serious faces at the Colonial Office, and all the little pleasantries of a friendly opposition were at an end.  It was felt that the battle must now become a real fight, and Secretary and Under-Secretary girded up their loins.