Other nations have public servants perhaps better trained in a technical sense than are ours, but no nation can boast a body of men who will thus obscurely and without reward sacrifice themselves wholly in the public service and be content to remain unknown. There is the whole truth upon the Anapootra Ruby Mines. The reader who has followed the plain narrative put before him will be able to judge between it and the monstrous assumption upon which Mr. Bailey was prepared to conduct, or at any rate to initiate, his mischievous agitation. The rapidity with which that agitation developed was embarrassing, even to a man so used to immediate decisions as the Duke of Battersea. To the ex-Lieutenant-Governor, whom his long and faithful public service in the tropics had deprived of digestion and had rendered partially deaf, it was appalling. It was upon Tuesday afternoon, January 8, 1912, that Mr. Bailey, looking up at the ceiling, had launched the fatal words. It was upon Tuesday evening that Mr. Clutterbuck had repeated them in the presence of Fitzgerald: thanks to the prompt and loyal action of that strong young Irish soul, the Duke knew of them before Wednesday noon. Forewarned is forearmed:--the malignant plot was at last defeated--but at what a sacrifice of honest ambition and happy lives the reader must learn and curse the name of William Bailey. * * * * * Charlie Fitzgerald sat long with the aged Duke--though there was little to say. He received with deference and grateful willingness the suggestion to be of service in a matter where written words were impossible. He made a note of whom he was to visit; how high he was to go in the event of some agency threatening to print the story of the Company; what he was to say to the editor by telephone, and what by letter to the Secretary of State. He proved that afternoon a second son to the old childless man, and when he had dined alone with him, and admired the new Rodin on the stairs, he went off to Scotland in the midnight sleeper to see the ex-Governor before the post should reach him. He was prepared to do all this and more for the Duke of Battersea, and the Duke was a grateful man. * * * * * The next morning's post was something of a trial to Mr. Clutterbuck in the absence of his secretary. He had learnt to depend upon that prop altogether, and at any other time he would have allowed all the letters which were not, by the handwriting, the letters of friends to accumulate unopened; but that day, January 10, 1912, that Thursday, he was too anxious to do any such thing. He opened one letter, then another; the third positively stupefied him. It was from his agent in Mickleton, and simply told him that a petition was to be lodged disputing the validity of his election. They had learnt the news upon the Wednesday evening. Mr. Clutterbuck was an honest man.