“Can’t use theory matter,” the dispatch read. “Campaign closed issue.” Trollope looked up presently and found awaiting his eyes three wide, indulgent smiles. Trollope was so seldom disconcerted that he now furnished an enjoyable moment for the others. “Cheer up, fat boy,” observed Finacune. “Your old man always was a ruffian. The _Word_ handed me the same thing when I undertook to explain to the boarding-schools of London what this reverse was all about, only the _Word_ did it in a refined, delicate way. You know I dreamed it all out that Russia had come to pay court to Mother India, and that there was a hitch about Tommy Atkins acting the best man----” “It was the only decent thing I sent in from the campaign,” Trollope growled. “They know more about it at Home than we do,” said Feeney, the saturnine, a confirmed wanderer, next to Cardinegh in years of service. He had searched the world for forty years to watch the crises of human events. Finacune inquired with a trace of animation, “We’ve all four been recalled, haven’t we?” The others disdained to answer, but Finacune went on airily. “We are experts--picked men--the choice of Europe to cover the turmoils of India and elsewhere. None stand beside us. Is this the truth or not?” It was acclaimed that this was plucked from the original garland of truth. “Now,” the _Word_ man asserted, “we find our cables, our expert and expensive cables, not cut, not filed for reference, not even trusted to the janitor’s basket, but, so far as we know, _burned unborn!_... We have received no explanation. We are not even told that we have done well or ill.” “I was told to shut up and come home,” drawled Trollope. “The same pellet in different coatings is being absorbed in the systems of three of us present,” Finacune added. “Listen. I’ve got a theory. England is menaced by her logical enemy from the North. Some brilliant _coup_ has been executed by the Russian spies, or else there has been treachery. I make no pretension of knowing just what has happened. Any way, it is big enough to make our native rebellion look like a flicker in a holocaust. The trouble is so big that it must be kept from the world, from the English people, from all but the Engine-room of England! We are muzzled, and our papers are muzzled. In a word, the crisis is so big that _the Press has rallied around the Throne_--to keep the matter dark!”