letter I had the honour of addressing to you yesterday, and the

substance of which, I flattered myself, you had come to answer in person. My name is Brown.”

“I am unfortunate,” said Gilead. “I have much correspondence and a poor memory, and a name, however distinctive, is apt to slip me. I devoted, I am afraid, but a cursory examination to this morning’s letters. The penalty is mine.”

Mr Brown bowed stiffly.

“Assuredly not, sir, since, it seems, I have appealed to your munificence in vain.”

“The misfortune, sir,” said Gilead, “is, by your favour, easily amended for both of us.”

His courtesy was so charming, that the indignant gentleman was instantly mollified.

“You are very good,” he said. “Your frankness invites a warmer confidence than that I had already ventured in a sacred cause. You are acquainted, no doubt, with the name of Mrs Craddock Flight?”

Gilead bowed.

“Of all the militant sisterhood,” said Mr Brown, “the bright particular star. It was she, if you remember, who chained herself to the wheel of the Prime Minister’s carriage, just as he was about to enter it to drive to the House of Commons, and so forced him to seek his infamous destination on foot. A woman of extraordinary resource and originality.”

“Extraordinary,” said Gilead. “If I recollect, she was nearly killed by the horses becoming restive before she could be released.”

“She would have been glad to die, sir,” said Brown, “in that glorious situation--a second St Catherine broken on the wheel for her faith.” He looked at his visitor searchingly. “Do not distress me, Mr Balm,” he said, “by affirming that the cause is to be denied its share of the vast resources at your disposal. No, no, you must be with us, sir. It was for that purpose that I wrote to you; it was for that purpose that I identified myself in my letter with a name calculated to shed refulgence on any propaganda to which it should elect to give itself--the name of Mrs Craddock Flight. That name, sir, and that cause lack nothing but the devotion of a sympathetic capitalist to ensure their immortality. It was to that stately name that I questioned the right application of so sugary an epithet as ‘sweet’. Finally, sir, that name--if I may dare the confidence--has pledged itself to become, on a single condition, my priceless possession; to adorn with its widowed lustre my no less widowed insignificance. I confess, sir, that I yearn to bask in that reflected glory--to follow in the tail of its comet-like flight to the new world its radiance is destined to discover to the enraptured vision of posterity.”

“You allude--?” said Gilead.

“I allude,” said Mr Brown, “to a world reconsecrated, through the political enfranchisement of woman, to reason, justice and purity. Everything, you will grant, is wrong as it is. Civilization, as a male imposition, has proved itself a depressing failure. Men, on true premises, labour to false conclusions; women, on false, jump to true. Their unerring moral sensitiveness penetrates all massed and complicated sophistries, and pierces in a flash to the heart of the real. Unbiassed by formulas, untrammelled by dogma, they will blow through our corrupt institutions like a cleansing gale, whirling the dead leaves of discredited systems before them. Woman is not conscientious, so to speak, in the prescriptive sense. She will strip from equity, justice and the moral law the trappings in which they have been too long confounded, and show us nature again, primitive and fearless.”

“Indeed?” said Gilead. “You surprise me.”

“There will be many surprises when the time comes,” said Mr Brown grandiloquently; and, on the very word, suffered a surprising change of countenance. “Why, why,” he cried, flushing scarlet; “my letter--my letter, sir, in which I expatiated at some length on this very subject. You have not seen it, you say? To what, then, am I to attribute the honour of your visit?”

“To an advertisement, sir,” said Gilead quietly, “about a dog.”

The effect of his words was startling. Mr Brown seemed to burst at the head, like an over-charged bottle of ginger-beer, and thence to spout a volume of incoherent expletives. He then, as if impelled by some uncontrollable emotion, went racing up and down the room, until, the pressure slacking, he gradually slowed, and finally came to a stop opposite his visitor, the steam, so to speak, all out of him.

“I see it all,” he said, in a state of the limpest depression. “By an irony of circumstance scarce credible, the sympathies I sought to engage have been forestalled by my own child in a trivial matter.”

“By a young friend of your child, sir, if I am correctly informed,” said Gilead kindly.

“You mean the boy Wimble?” said Mr Brown bitterly. “No doubt, sir, your information--”

“It was at first hand,” put in the visitor, smiling. “I met the young people outside, and got into talk with them. The boy, he himself confessed to me, composed and inserted the advertisement.”

“The grotesque impertinence of it!” cried Mr Brown, boiling over; “the assurance and the inopportuneness!”

“I understand,” said Gilead, “that you authorized the little lady to find, if possible, a home for the animal?”

“Go on, sir, go on!” said Mr Brown resignedly. “Tell me that I authorized her to hold her father up to ridicule before the world.”

“Nay, sir,” said Gilead, “I am quite at sea in the matter.”

“I will acquaint you, Mr Balm,” said the father dismally, “with the facts of the case--especially as they bear in some measure on a confidence I have already reposed in you. Mrs Craddock Flight, sir, made it a condition of our union that the dog should be destroyed.”

“It was the single condition to which you referred, I assume,” said the visitor. “May I venture to ask what suggested it?”

“The dog had bitten her, sir. They will take these unaccountable aversions. It was during a short visit she lately paid us.”

“Pardon me,” said Gilead, “if I enquire if your little girl is not very attached to the animal?”

“There is no denying,” said Mr Brown, “that Judy is devoted to Pilot, and Pilot to Judy. It was on that account that I was moved to sanction the compromise of a new home, in which compromise, I have not the least doubt, Mrs Flight’s superior reason will acquiesce, particularly when she is informed of the character of the applicant.”

Gilead bowed. “May I see the dog?” he asked.

Mr Brown shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands in a manner of patient repudiation.

“With pleasure,” he said, and evidently without the least. “We will go at once.”

He led the visitor out by a back door, across a fair but neglected lawn, through a space of untended kitchen garden, and so down to the river bank, where, by some water steps and a little boat-house, stood a dog-kennel of considerable dimensions. And straight, on the sound of their approach, there issued from this last, with a rattle of iron links, a magnificent Newfoundland.

Gilead exclaimed.

“But he is superb! I am quite astonished! His value, Mr Brown!”

The master was engaged in releasing swivel from collar. The beautiful dog, fawning and delighted, made up to him endearingly.

“Judy, I am sure,” said Judy’s father in a suppressed voice, “would never dream of making a transaction of her pet. Yes, there’s your little mistress, boy.”

The great dog, released, went bounding joyously and sniffing riverwards. There was a punt out there in mid-stream, and a small meaty boy was upright in it, endeavouring to find soft bottom, for fishing purposes, with one of its poles. A little girl in a flowered hat sat in the stern.

“It seems a harsh necessity,” said the father, in a voice which made Gilead approve him for the first time; “but the cause, sir, the cause is paramount.”

Gilead, quite fascinated, called to the dog--approached him. At that instant there came a shrill cry from the father: “Sit down, Judy, sit down! My God!”

There was an answering screech from the river; a splash; the small boy, slipping his hold in a panic, went down among the thwarts, and the punt, leaving its pole sticking in the mud, began to swing downstream. Judy, in anguish of the scene enacting on the banks, thinking to see her pet ravished away before her eyes, had stood up, and, blind with grief, had lost her footing and tumbled overboard. She could not swim; neither of the men could swim; the boy in the punt, nerveless and blubbered, was worse then inept. A dreadful moment of paralysis followed, and then two little arms and a draggled head came above the surface.

[image: images/img_075.jpg caption: “A SOFT, SEAL-LIKE HEAD WAS SEEN DRIVING ACROSS THE SHINING FLOOD.”]

Gilead, in agony, stumbled for the boat-house; the father, sobbing and staring, was already waist-deep in the water. “My little child!” he gasped--“my little child!”--there went by them both a great bound and surge, and swift and unerring a soft seal-like head was seen driving across the shining flood. They stood like things of stone, hardly breathing--and then there came a swirl, a reasoned snap; and the little face, wild and choking, was lifted above the surface. Good Pilot! Loyal and lovely friend! He brought her, crying, to the steps, and there having deposited her, shook himself, and crouched, somewhat appealing, as if he had taken a liberty.

* * * * *

The little girl, well-frightened but unharmed, was asleep upstairs; the greater dog lay blinking on the hearthrug; Gilead, by his host’s particular desire, delayed his departure yet a little.

Very few words had passed between them, and the young man was considering with what manner of blessing he could best terminate a visit, whose prolongation, in view of the subdued and obviously self-tormented figure before him, seemed an impertinence, when a ring at the bell sounded through the silent house, and its master was presented with a telegram. Its perusal appeared to act upon him like an instant and amazing stimulant. He rose, his spectacles seemed to glare, his head to bristle. Patently on the verge of an explosion, he stepped across to Gilead with an exaggerated softness, and laid the paper before him. “Oblige me by reading that,” he said. The young man, wondering, obeyed.

“_Have just seen advertisement. Either the dog must be destroyed or our compact ends. Answer prepaid. Isabella._”

Gilead looked up.

“Yes, from her,” said Mr Brown, still with an icy quietude, in answer to the mute enquiry. And then the burst came--only a little rent at the outset, but rapidly roaring to a breach:--

“Now, isn’t that just like a woman--without reason or justice or decency--mere venomous spite, indifferent to the consequences to others so long as it can injure the object of its resentment. Sympathy? Nonsense! Tell me why, in the University boat-race on this river, nine women out of ten will be Cambridge? Out of pity for its persistent ill-success? Not in the least, sir. Simply because they think the colour the more becoming.” (The breach widened) “Consistency? Bosh! with minds the sport of any chance mood? Veering as the compass--changeable as the weather--you may forecast ’em fair in the morning, and be drenched or frozen by ’em in the afternoon?” (The breach split resoundingly) “Principles? Lunacy! Their one indestructible principle is vanity, and in their wild rush for personal notoriety of any sort, all principles and all decencies may go to the devil” (The breach, with a roar, rent from hem to hem). “From this moment I repudiate the cause,” shouted Mr Brown, glaring and dancing; “from this moment I refuse to identify myself with a sex so utterly deficient in the moral sense. Votes for women! Not unless we wish to see our national character for reason and fair-play thrown by the board! Not unless we wish to see our most cherished institutions of order and justice degraded to the uses of irresponsible malice. Incapable of governing, even themselves--a set of chattering harpies lusting for the blood of heroes!”

He ended with a roar. Gilead rose to his feet.

“The maid is waiting for an answer, sir,” he said; and, indeed, the poor girl stood as if petrified.

“Give me the paper!” yelled Mr Brown. He snatched it from the young man’s ready hand, slung out a pencil from his watch-chain, dabbed at the reply form, fuming and sputtering.

[image: images/img_078.jpg caption: “HE DABBED AT THE REPLY FORM, FUMING AND SPUTTERING.”]

“The dog must die, must he?” he panted ironically. “My child must be sacrificed to a swollen-headed harpy’s caprice! A useful lesson; I thank you, madam”--and he dashed off the following message. (Gilead had the assurance to glance at it, as he handed it to the girl): “_Offer declined. The dog remains with me. Theophilus._”

A minute later, Gilead, being assured of the departure of the telegraph boy, took his own with much satisfaction, leaving Mr Brown fondly stroking the head of the great dog as he lay upon the rug.