Marcus White, after the episode already chronicled, took his headlong way beyond the ken of all his English associates. He was heard of as having made a huge fortune in Mexico, a country offering far more scope for a man of such drastic methods and daring enterprise. Westwood stayed at home and plodded on. After his marriage, and when, as yet, briefs were far from plentiful, he and his wife lived in quite a quiet middle-class way at Norwood. He came to London every day, and took his meagre luncheon daily like any other grubbing barrister at a stuffy restaurant in Fleet Street. To find on his table a brief marked ten and one was quite a rare and gladdening event. In the general way prices ruled considerably lower in his chambers. But it was otherwise after he had entered Parliament. Ten years later there was a shuffling of parties, and John Westwood, who had taken silk, shot into the very bull’s-eye of political life. The prophets said that he would reach the Woolsack; but, meanwhile, sundry faithful if dull members of the bar and of the party blocked the way. The Chancellor clung to life and office with a tenacity which upset all calculations. The Attorney-General, too, refused to recognise the grave complaint from which he suffered as an equivalent to notice to quit. Other Government appointments were, in omnibus language, “full up,” and John Westwood, K.C., M.P., had to be content with a knighthood and the office of Solicitor-General. But his income and fees amounted to some ten thousand a year, and he was a man of thrifty habits, and saved considerably. Yet a price has to be paid by the man who burns the candle at both ends--in Parliament and in the Law Courts. It is the kind of double life that kills all but the toughest, and Sir John was far from tough. Affairs of state were critical, and at this crisis his “sword hung rusting on the wall,” while he was urgently wanted at Westminster. He was still lingering at Folkestone when delicate problems of international law demanded all the acumen that his brain could bring to bear. The Prime Minister almost implored his assistance, but, the specialist who had come down to the Métropole to see him asserted bluntly that it would be more than his sanity, or perhaps his life, could stand if yet awhile he plunged back into the quagmire of jurisprudence or the sea of party strife. Such was the man who paced with restless steps the room of the hotel that summer night. On the table were despatch boxes, blue books, blue draft papers, and bulky volumes that had been sent down from London. These were his tools, and he could not handle them! Aldwyth, his only child, and the one being in the world for whom his heart beat with affection, sat by the window anxiously watching him. Her love and tenderness, as she was beginning to realise, were powerless to assuage his mental suffering. Alone, we come into the world; alone, we tread the winepress of life; alone, we leave it by the darkened door.