And what will the reader suppose was the end of all this? The whole truth has been told as accurately as we can tell it. As far as we know our own business we were not wrong in any single step we took. Our treatment of Mrs. Brumby was courteous, customary, and conciliatory. We had treated her with more consideration than we had perhaps ever before shown to an unknown, would-be contributor. She had been admitted thrice to our presence. We had read at any rate enough of her trash to be sure of its nature. On the other hand, we had been insulted, and our clerk had had his ears boxed. What should have been the result? We will tell the reader what was the result. Mr. X. paid £10 to Messrs. Badger and Blister on behalf of the lieutenant; and we, under Mr. Sharp’s advice, wrote a letter to Mrs. Brumby in which we expressed deep sorrow for our clerk’s misconduct, and our own regret that we should have delayed,--“the perusal of her manuscript.” We could not bring ourselves to write the words ourselves with our own fingers, but signed the document which Mr. Sharp put before us. Mr. Sharp had declared to Messrs. X., Y., and Z., that unless some such arrangement were made, he thought that we should be cast for a much greater sum before a jury. For one whole morning in Paternoster Row we resisted this infamous tax, not only on our patience, but,--as we then felt it,--on our honour. We thought that our very old friend Mr. X. should have stood to us more firmly, and not have demanded from us a task that was so peculiarly repugnant to our feelings. “And it is peculiarly repugnant to my feelings to pay £10 for nothing,” said Mr. X., who was not, we think, without some little feeling of revenge against us; “but I prefer that to a lawsuit.” And then he argued that the simple act on our part of signing such a letter as that presented to us could cost us no trouble, and ought to occasion us no sorrow. “What can come of it? Who’ll know it?” said Mr. X. “We’ve got to pay £10, and that we shall feel.” It came to that at last, that we were constrained to sign the letter,--and did sign it. It did us no harm, and can have done Mrs. Brumby no good but the moment in which we signed it was perhaps the bitterest we ever knew. That in such a transaction Mrs. Brumby should have been so thoroughly successful, and that we should have been so shamefully degraded, has always appeared to us to be an injury too deep to remain unredressed for ever. Can such wrongs be, and the heavens not fall! Our greatest comfort has been in the reflection that neither the lieutenant nor his wife ever saw a shilling of the £10. That, doubtless, never went beyond Badger and Blister. THE END. PRINTED BY W. H. SMITH AND SON, 186, STRAND, LONDON.