Some averred that the Viceroy, indignantly refusing to be a party to this policy, feigned illness and stayed away; others declared that his resignation had been tendered and accepted, but that measures of state required secrecy on the subject; while a third section of guessers suggested that, when the coarse work of corruption had been accomplished by the Secretary, his Excellency would arrive to crown the edifice. At all events, the Ministry stood in need of these “free lances,” and Cholmondely Balfour was sent over to secure them. Before all governmental changes there is a sort of “ground swell” amongst the knowing men of party that presages the storm; and so, now, scarcely had Balfour reached the Lodge than a rumor ran that some new turn of policy was about to be tried, and that what is called the “Irish difficulty” was going to be discounted into the English necessity. The first arrival at the Lodge was Pemberton. He had just been defeated at his election for Mallow, and ascribed his failure to the lukewarmness of the Government, and the indifference with which they had treated his demands for some small patronage for his supporters. Nor was it mere indifference; there was actual reason to believe that favor was shown to his opponent, and that Mr. Heffernan, the Catholic barrister of extreme views, had met the support of more than one of those known to be under Government influence. There was a story of a letter from the Irish Office to Father O'Hea, the parish priest. Some averred they had read it, declaring that the Cabinet only desired to know “the real sentiments of Ireland, what Irishmen actually wished and wanted,” to meet them. Now, when a Government official writes to a priest, his party is always _in extremis_. Pemberton reached the Lodge feverish, irritated, and uneasy. He had, not very willingly, surrendered a great practice at the Bar to enter life as a politician, and now what if the reward of his services should turn out to be treachery and betrayal? Over and over again had he been told he was to have the Bench; but the Chief Baron would neither die nor retire, nor was there any vacancy amongst the other courts. Nor had he done very well in Parliament; he was hasty and irritable in reply, too discursive in statement, and, worse than these, not plodding enough nor sufficiently given to repetition to please the House; for the “assembled wisdom” is fond of its ease, and very often listens with a drowsy consciousness that if it did not catch what the orator said aright, it was sure to hear him say it again later on. He had made no “hit” with the House, and he was not patient enough nor young enough to toil quietly on to gain that estimation which he had hoped to snatch at starting.