Where is Macduff? I wish, my dear Saltren, you would find him and send him to me. By-the-way, have you spoken to your father about—what was it? Oh, yes, the sale of his house. Fortunate it is that a railway company, and not I, want Chillacot, or I should be represented as the rich man demanding the ewe lamb, as coveting Naboth’s vineyard, by this prophet of the press. Who the deuce is he? He must have been here and must know something of the place, there is just so much of truth mixed up with the misrepresentations as to make the case look an honest one. I want Macduff. Have you seen your father about that matter of Chillacot, Saltren?” “My lord,” said Jingles, “I am sorry I have not seen him yet. In fact, to tell the truth, I—I yesterday forgot the commission.” “Oh!” said Lord Lamerton, now hot and irritable, “oh, don’t trouble yourself any more about it. I’ll send Matthews after Macduff. I’ll go down to Chillacot myself. Confound this correspondent. His impudence is amazing.” Lord Lamerton took most matters easily. The enigmatical words of his daughter, the preceding evening, in the avenue, had not made much impression on him. They were, he said, part of her rodomontade. But he repeated them to his wife, and to her they had a graver significance than he attributed to them. This article in the paper, however, agitated him deeply, and he was very angry, more angry than any one had seen him for several years; and the last explosion was caused by the poisoning of some of his fox-hounds. “Matthews, send James down after Mr. Macduff at once.” “Yes, my lord.” “And, Saltren, a word with you in the smoking room if you can spare me the time.” “I am at your service, my lord.” Lord Lamerton had been so excited by the article he had read that he was in a humour to find fault; and, as Viola says “Like the haggard check at every feather That comes before his eye.” Such moods did not last long; he was the slowest of men to be roused, and when angry, the most placable; but an injustice angered him, and he had been unjustly treated in the article in that morning’s paper. There must be deep in our souls, some original sense of justice, for there is nothing so maddens a man and sweeps him in angry fever beyond the control of reason, as a sense of injustice done, not only to himself, but to another. It is the violation of this ineradicable sense of justice which provokes to the commission of the grossest injustice, for it blinds the eyes to all extenuations and qualifying circumstances. It is an expansive and explosive gas that lies latent in every breast—in the most pure and crystalline, an infinite blessing to the world, but often infinitely mischievous. It is the moral dynamite in our composition.