One morning they found him pacing up and down the dining-room with _The Times_ newspaper in his hand, and every mark of cerebral excitement. His friend ---- ---- had made a speech at a certain banquet, in which he had hit the Government a nasty knock. It was now, of course, only a question of whether they would retain office till the Lord Chancellor, who was very shaky, dropped off. He dropped off in June, and they buried him in Westminster Abbey; his friend ---- ---- and himself being chief mourners. In the same week the Government was defeated. The state of his mind can now not well be imagined. In one week he lost five pounds that could not be spared. He stopped losing weight when the Government decided to hang on till the end of the session. On the 15th of July the Prime Minister sent for him, and offered him the Chancellorship. He accepted it, after first drawing attention to the superior claims of his friend ---- ----. That evening, in the bosom of his family, he sat silent. A little smile played three times on his worn lips, and now and again his thin hand smoothed the parallel folds in his cheeks. His youngest daughter, moving to the bell behind his revered and beloved presence, heard him suddenly mutter, and bending hastily caught the precious words: “Pipped him on the post, by gum!” He took up his final honours with the utmost ceremony. From that moment it was almost too noticeable how his powers declined. It was as if he had felt that, having won the race, he had nothing left to live for. Indeed, he only waited till his friend ---- ---- had received a slight stroke before, under doctor’s orders, he laid down office. He dragged on for several years, writing his memoirs, but without interest in life; till one day, being drawn in his Bath-chair down the esplanade at Margate, he was brought to a standstill by another chair being drawn in the opposite direction. Letting his eye rest wearily on the occupant, he recognised his friend ---- ----. How the fellow had changed; but not in nature, for he quavered out at once: “Hallo! It’s you! By George! You look jolly bad!” Hearing those words, seeing that paralytic smile, a fire seemed suddenly relit within him. Compressing his lips, he answered nothing, and dug his Bath-chair man in the back. From that moment he regained his interest in life. If he could not outlive his friend ---- ---- it would be odd! And he set himself to do it, thinking of nothing else by day or night, and sending daily to inquire how his friend ---- ---- was. The fellow lived till New Year’s Day, and died at two in the morning. They brought him the news at nine. A smile lighted up his parched and withered face; his old hands, clenched on the feeding-cup, relaxed; he fell back--dead. The shock of his old friend’s death, they said, had been too much for him. FOR LOVE OF BEASTS § 1.