"John!--John!" he groaned. "They'll be dancing and triumphing on your grave to-night, John; and that fellow you were a father to--like the rest. But they shall do it without me, John--they shall do it without me!" And he thought, with a grim satisfaction, of the note he had just confided to the Premier's second messenger refusing the offer of the Attorney-Generalship. He was sorry for Broadstone; he had done his best to comfort him; but he would serve in no Government with John's supplanters. * * * * * Meanwhile Marsham was speeding up to town. At every way-side station, under the evening light, he saw the long lines of placards: "Sudden death of Mr. Ferrier. Effect on the new Ministry." Every paper he bought was full of comments and hasty biographies. There was more than a conventional note of loss in them. Ferrier was not widely popular, in the sense in which many English statesmen have been popular, but there was something in his personality that had long since won the affection and respect of all that public, in all classes, which really observes and directs English affairs. He was sincerely mourned, and he would be practically missed. But the immediate effect would be the triumph of the Cave, a new direction given to current politics. That no one doubted. Marsham was lost in tumultuous thought. The truth was that the two articles in the _Herald_ of that morning, which had arrived at Tallyn by nine o'clock, had struck him with nothing less than consternation. Ever since his interview with Barrington, he had persuaded himself that in it he had laid the foundations of party reunion; and he had since been eagerly scanning the signs of slow change in the attitude of the party paper, combined--as they had been up to this very day--with an unbroken personal loyalty to Ferrier. But the article of this morning had shown a complete--and in Oliver's opinion, as he read it at the breakfast-table--an extravagant _volte-face_. It amounted to nothing less than a vehement appeal to the new Prime Minister to intrust the leadership of the House of Commons, at so critical a moment, to a man more truly in sympathy with the forward policy of the party.