thoroughly understood this;--but he knew also that there are various ways in which a lame dog may be helped over a stile,--if only the lame dog be popular among dogs. For another ex-Solicitor-General a seat would have been found,--or some delay would have been granted,--or at least there would have been a consultation, with a suggestion that something should be tried. But in this case a man four years his junior in age, whom he despised, and who, as he was informed, had obtained his place in Parliament by gross bribery, was put into the office without a word of apology to him. Then he was unhappy, and acknowledged to himself that his spirit was crushed. But he acknowledged to himself at the same time that he was one doomed by his nature to such crushing of the spirit if he came out of the hole of his solitude, and endeavoured to carry on the open fight of life among his fellow-men. He knew that he was one doomed to that disappointment, the bitterest of all, which comes from failure when the prize has been all but reached. It is much to have become Solicitor-General, and that he had achieved;--but it is worse than nothing to have been Solicitor-General for four months, and then to find that all the world around one regards one as having failed, and as being, therefore, fit for the shelf. Such were Sir Thomas Underwood's feelings as he sat alone in his chambers during those days in which the new administration was formed,--in which days he was neither consulted nor visited, nor communicated with either by message or by letter. But all this,--this formation of a Ministry, in which the late Solicitor-General was not invited to take a part,--occurred seven years before the commencement of our story.