It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that when the M'Korio Delta Development Company was taken over by the State, his connection with that gallant experiment in the building of Empire, earned him a permanent fame more valuable than any material reward. He had long ago severed all personal connection with the district, retaining only so many shares as permitted him to sit upon the Board, and it is no little tribute to this great Englishman to point out that after seventeen years, during which it had been impossible to pay a dividend, he was able triumphantly to persuade a united public opinion and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to purchase the concession at par: more, he handed over intact to the Crown not only the delta of the M'Korio River, but Mubu Otowa and the malarial district to the south of Tschè. It was shortly after this achievement, in the year 1910, that he consented--somewhat reluctantly--to an advance in honour and accepted the Dukedom of Battersea. The lower rungs of the ladder he had been willing to mount; but a natural reserve had forbidden him hitherto to accede to the most pressing entreaties from either Party. He had indeed kept aloof from party politics, and had subscribed to the funds of the two great organisations only because he thought it his duty to enable men poorer than himself to display their talents in the arena of Parliament and because he justly desired to preserve some power for righteousness with the Executive of the moment. Even at this late hour, over seventy years of age, and prepared at any moment to answer the Great Summons, he would hardly have followed the advice of his friend the Prime Minister in accepting the honour proposed to him, had not the task been rendered sadly easier to him by one tragic accident: there was no longer an heir to his vast wealth and honourable name. The Master of Kendale (for such was the name of the old Scottish place), the handsome, intelligent boy with the bourbon nose, the wealth of black curls, proud full lips, and brilliant eyes which had lent such life to so many reunions, the child of Lord Lambeth's old age, his Ben-jamin was no more. The young soldier had lost his off stirrup only the summer before while trotting his yeomen on parade before the royal visitors to the Potteries, and when he was picked up he was quite dead; the neck was broken between the second and third cervical vertebræ.