The letter did not astonish him but it made him very uncomfortable. He was a person of amiable disposition and he felt that it would be unkind to wholly neglect so pitiful and just an appeal. Yet to address the owner of Harrenden House and Vale Royal, on such a subject was an extremely unpleasant task, one which he was not disposed for a moment to accept. To tell Solomon in all his glory that he had kept a drink and play saloon, and cheated about a placer-claim, demanded a degree of audacity which is not required by governments from those excellent public servants who sit in consular offices and in chancelleries to indite reports which are to be pigeon-holed unread, and throw oil on the troubled waters of international commerce. He had no doubt whatever that the statements of the letter were true; he remembered having heard it said by some members of Congress in Washington a score of years before that the Penamunic Tin Mine had been obtained by Massarene through a chance more fortunate than honest, and nothing which anyone could have told him of the past of Blasted Blizzard would have ever found him incredulous. He knew too well on what foundations the fortunes of such men are built. “This is very dreadful,” he said to the Vice-Consul, when the latter had read the letter. “But you see the man is a native of Haddington. I cannot admit that he should apply to us. We are clearly only here to assist American subjects. If it were a matter of a kind on which I could approach Mr. Massarene as _amicus curiæ_, I would do so. But on such a matter as this it would be impossible to speak to him without offence. Will you be so good as to write to the man Mathers, and tell him that our office is not the channel through which his friend--er--what is his name?--Robert Airley, can apply; tell him he should address the English Consul-General in New York.” “Poor devils!” said the Vice-Consul, who knew well what is meant by the dreary and interminable labyrinth of official assistance and interference. “You know Massarene very well,” he ventured to add. “Couldn’t you suggest to him----” “Certainly not,” said his chief decidedly. “Massarene is an English subject. So is Robert Airley. So is George Mathers. We have nothing to do with any of them. They have never been naturalized. The application is entirely irregular. Return the letter and tell them to address the English Consul-General at New York.” The Vice-Consul did so; and in due time a similar letter was sent to the English Consul-General at New York by George Mathers, who added to it that the wife of Robert Airley had died a week earlier of pneumonia brought on by want of food. The English Consul-General returned the letter addressed to him, and informed the writer that he could not interfere between employer and employed, or in any private quarrel at any time; the matter was not within his competence.