"When you asked me to stand for the place I had not heard that he thought of being a candidate. I wrote and told her so, and told her also that had I known it before I would not have come here." "I don't quite see that," said Gresham. "Perhaps not;--perhaps I was a fool. But we needn't go into that. At any rate there was no insult to him. I wrote in the simplest language." "Looking at it all round I think you had better not have written." "You wouldn't say so if you saw the letter. I'm sure you wouldn't. I had known her all my life. My brother is married to her cousin. Oh heavens! we had been all but engaged. I would have done anything for her. Was it not natural that I should tell her? As far as the language was concerned the letter was one to be read at Charing Cross." "He says that she was annoyed and insulted." "Impossible! It was a letter that any man might have written to any woman." "Well;--you have got to take care of yourself at any rate. What will you do?" "What ought I to do?" "Go to the police." Mr. Gresham had himself once, when young, thrashed a man who had offended him and had then thought himself much aggrieved because the police had been called in. But that had been twenty years ago, and Mr. Gresham's opinions had been matured and, perhaps, corrected by age. "No; I won't do that," said Arthur Fletcher. "That's what you ought to do." "I couldn't do that." "Then take no notice of the letter and carry a fairly big stick. It should be big enough to hurt him a good deal, but not to do him any serious damage." At that moment an agent came in with news of the man's retirement from the contest. "Has he left the town?" asked Gresham. No;--he had not left the town, nor had he been seen by any one that morning. "You had better let me go out and get the stick, before you show yourself," said Gresham. And so the stick was selected. As the two walked down the street together, almost the first thing they saw was Lopez standing at his hotel door with a cutting whip in his hand. He was at that moment quite alone, but on the opposite side of the street there was a policeman,--one of the borough constables,--very slowly making his way along the pavement. His movement, indeed, was so slow that any one watching him would have come to the conclusion that that particular part of the High Street had some attraction for him at that special moment. Alas, alas! How age will alter the spirit of a man! Twenty years since Frank Gresham would have thought any one to be a mean miscreant who would have interposed a policeman between him and his foe. But it is to be feared that while selecting that stick he had said a word which was causing the constable to loiter on the pavement!