He had been right in his forecast when he told Mary that a political crisis was at hand. That which had been long whispered, was beginning to be stated openly in club and market-place. The Corn Laws, the support of the country, the mainstay, as so many thought, of the Constitution, were in danger; and behind closed doors, while England listened without, the doctors were met to decide their fate.

Potatoes! The word flew from mouth to mouth that wet autumn, from town to country, from village to village. Potatoes! The thing seemed incredible. That the lordly Corn Laws, the bulwark of the landed interest, the prop of agriculture, that had withstood all attacks for two generations, and maintained themselves alike against high prices and the Corn Law League--that these should go down because a vulgar root like the potato had failed in Ireland--it was a thing passing belief. It couldn't be. With the Conservatives in power, it seemed impossible.

Yet it was certain that the position was grave, if not hopeless. Never since the Reform Bill had there been such meetings of the Cabinet, so frequent, so secret. And strange things were said. Some who had supported Peel yet did not trust him, maintained that this was the natural sequel of his measures, the point to which he had been moving through all the years of his Ministry. Potatoes--bah! Others who still supported him, yet did not trust him, brooded nervously over his action twenty years before, when he had first resisted and then accepted the Catholic claims. Tories and Conservatives alike, wondered what they were there to conserve, if such things were in the wind; they protested, but with growing misgiving, that the thing could not be. While those among them who had seats to save and majorities to guard, met one another with gloomy looks, whispered together in corners and privately asked themselves what they would do--if he did. Happy in these circumstances were those who like Mottisfont, the father, were ready to retire; and still happier those who like Mottisfont, the son, knew the wishes of their constituents and could sing "John Barleycorn, my Joe, John," with no fear of being jilted.

Their anxieties--they were politicians--were mainly personal--and selfish. But there were some, simple people like Mr. Stubbs at Riddsley, who really believed, when these rumors reached them, that the foundations of things were breaking up, and that the world in which they had lived was sinking under their feet. Already in fancy they saw the glare of furnaces fall across the peaceful fields. Already they heard the tall mill jar and quiver where the cosey homestead and the full stackyard sprawled. They saw a weakly race, slaves to the factory bell, overrun the land where the ploughman still whistled at his work and his wife suckled healthy babes. To these men, if the rumors they heard were true, if Peel had indeed sold the pass, it meant the loss of all. It meant the victory of coal and cotton, the ruling of all after the Manchester pattern, the reign of Cash, the Lord, and ten per cent. his profit. It meant the end of the old England they had loved.

Not that Stubbs said this at Riddsley, or anything like it. He smiled and kept silence, as became a man who knew much and was set above common rumor. The landlord of the Audley Arms, the corndealer, the brewer, the saddler went away from him with their fears allayed merely by the way in which he shrugged his shoulders. At the farmers' ordinary he had never been more cheerful. He gave the toast of "Horn and Corn, gentlemen! And when potatoes take their place you may come and tell me!" And he gave it so heartily that the farmers went home, market-peart and rejoicing, laughed at their doubting neighbors, and quoted a hundred things that Lawyer Stubbs had not said.

But a day or two later the lawyer sustained an unpleasant shock. He had been little moved by Lord John's manifesto--the declaration in which the little Whig Leader, seeing that the Government hesitated, had plumped for total repeal. That was in the common course of things. It had heartened him, if anything. It was natural. It would bring the Tories into line and put an end to trimming. But this--this which confronted him one morning when he opened his London paper was different. He read it, he held his breath, he stood aghast a long minute, he swore. After a few minutes he took his hat and the newspaper, and went round to the house in which Lord Audley lived when he was at Riddsley.

It was a handsome Georgian house, built of brick with stone facings, and partly covered with ivy. A wide smooth lawn divided it from the road. The occupant was a curate's widow who lived there with her two sisters and eked out their joint means by letting the first floor to her landlord. For "The Butterflies" was Audley property, and the clergyman's widow was held to derogate in no way by an arrangement which differed widely from a common letting of lodgings. Mrs. Jenkinson was stout, short, and fussy, her sisters were thin, short, and precise, but all three overflowed with words as kindly as their deeds. Good Mrs. Jenkinson, in fact, who never spoke of his lordship behind his back but with distant respect, sometimes forgot in his presence that he was anything but a "dear young man," and when he had a cold, would prescribe a posset or a warming-pan with an insistence which at times amused and more often bored him.

Stubbs found his lordship just risen from a late lunch, and in his excitement, the lawyer forgot his manners. "By G--d, my lord!" he cried, "he's resigned."

Audley looked at him with displeasure. "Who's resigned?" he asked coldly.

"Peel!"

Against that news the young man was not proof. He caught the infection. "Impossible!" he said, rising to his feet.

"It's true! It's in the Morning Post, my lord! He saw the Queen yesterday. She's sending for Lord John. It's black treachery! It's the blackest of treachery! With a majority in the House, with the peers in his pocket, the country quiet, trade improving, everything in his favor, he's sold us--sold us to Cobden on some d--d pretext of famine in Ireland!"

Audley did not answer at once. He stood deep in thought, his eyes on the floor, his hands in his pockets. At length, "I don't follow it," he said. "How is Russell, who is in a minority, to carry repeal?"

"Peel's promised his support!" Stubbs cried. Like most honest men, he was nothing if not thorough. "You may depend upon it, my lord, he has! He won't deceive me again. I know him through and through, now. He'll take with him Graham and Gladstone and Herbert, his old tail, Radicals at heart every man of them, and he's the biggest!"

"Well," Audley said slowly, "he might have done one thing worse. He might have stayed in and passed repeal himself!"

"Good G--d!" the lawyer cried, "Judas wouldn't have done that! All he could do, he has done. He has let in corn from Canada, cattle from Heaven knows where, he has let in wool. All that he has done. But even he has a limit, my lord! Even he! The man who was returned to support the Corn Laws--to repeal them. Impossible!"

"Well?" Audley said. "There'll be an election, I suppose?"

"The sooner the better," Stubbs answered vengefully. "And we shall see what the country thinks of this. In Riddsley we've been ready for weeks--as you know, my lord. But a General Election? Gad! I only hope they will put up some one here, and we will give them such a beating as they've never had!"

Audley pondered. "I suppose Riddsley is safe," he said.

"As safe as Burton Bridge, my lord!"

The other rattled the money in his pocket. "As long as you give them a lead, Stubbs, I suppose? But if you went over? What then?"

Stubbs opened his eyes. "Went over?" he ejaculated.

"Oh, I don't mean," my lord said airily, "that you're not as staunch as Burton Bridge. But supposing you took the other side--it would make a difference, I suppose?"

"Not a jot!" the lawyer answered sturdily.

"Not even if the two Mottisfonts sided with Peel?"

"If they did the old gentleman would never see Westminster again," Stubbs cried, "nor the young one go there!"

"Or," Audley continued, setting his shoulders against the mantel-shelf, and smiling, "suppose I did? If the Beaudelays interest were cast for repeal? What then?"

"What then?" Stubbs answered. "You'll pardon me, my lord, if I am frank. Then the Beaudelays influence, that has held the borough time out of mind, that returned two members before '32, and has returned one since--there'd be an end of it! It would snap like a rotten stick. The truth is we hold the borough while we go with the stream. In fair weather when it is a question of twenty votes one way or the other, we carry it. And you've the credit, my lord."

Audley moved his shoulders restlessly. "It's all I get by it," he said. "If I could turn the credit into a snug place of two thousand a year, Stubbs--it would be another thing. Do you know," he continued, "I've often wondered why you feel so strongly on the corn-taxes?"

"You asked me that once before, my lord," the agent answered slowly. "All that I can say is that more things than one go to it. Perhaps the best answer I can make is that, like your lordship's influence in the borough, it's part sentiment and part tradition. I have a picture in my mind--it's a picture of an old homestead that my grandfather lived in and died in, and that I visited when I was a boy. That would be about the middle nineties; the French war going, corn high, cattle high, a good horse in the gig and old ale for all comers. There was comfort inside and plenty without; comfort in the great kitchen, with its floor as clean as a pink, and greened in squares with bay leaves, its dresser bright with pewter, its mantel with Toby jugs! There was wealth in the stackyard, with the poultry strutting and scratching, and more in the byres knee-deep in straw, and the big barn where they flailed the wheat! And there were men and maids more than on two farms to-day, some in the house, some in thatched cottages with a run on the common and wood for the getting. I remember, as if they were yesterday, hot summer afternoons when there'd be a stillness on the farm and all drowsed together, the bees, and the calves, and the old sheep-dog, and the only sounds that broke the silence were the cluck of a hen, or the clank of pattens on the dairy-floor, while the sun fell hot on the orchard, where a little boy hunted for damsons! That's what I often see, my lord," Stubbs continued stoutly. "And may Peel protect me, if I ever raise a finger to set mill and furnace, devil's dust and slave-grown cotton, in place of that!"

My lord concealed a yawn. "Very interesting, Stubbs," he said. "Quite a picture! Peace and plenty and old ale! And little Jack Horner sitting in a corner! No, don't go yet, man. I want you." He made a sign to Stubbs to sit down, and settling his shoulders more firmly against the mantel-shelf, he thrust his hands deeper into his trouser-pockets. "I'm not easy in my mind about John Audley," he said. "I'm not sure that he has not found something."

Stubbs stared. "There's nothing to find," he said. "Nothing, my lord! You may be sure of it."

"He goes there."

"It's a craze."

"It's a confoundedly unpleasant one!"

"But harmless, my lord. Really harmless."

The younger man's impatience darkened his face, but he controlled it--a sure sign that he was in earnest. "Tell me this," he said. "What evidence would upset us? You told me once that the claim could be reopened on fresh evidence. On what evidence?"

"I regard the case as closed," Stubbs answered stubbornly. "But if you put the question--" he seemed to reflect--"the point at issue, on which the whole turned, was the legitimacy of your great-grandfather, my lord, Peter Paravicini Audley's son. Mr. John's great-grandfather was Peter Paravicini's younger brother. The other side alleged, but could not produce, a family agreement admitting that the son was illegitimate. Such an agreement, if Peter Paravicini was a party to it, if it was proved, and came from the proper custody, would be an awkward document and might let in the next brother's descendants--that's Mr. John. But in my opinion, its existence is a fairy story, and in its absence, the entry in the register stands good."

"But such a document would be fatal?"

"If it fulfilled the conditions it would be serious," the lawyer admitted. "But it does not exist," he added confidently.

"And yet--I'm not comfortable, Stubbs," Audley rejoined. "I can't get John Audley's face out of my mind. If ever man looked as if he had his enemy by the throat, he looked it; a d--d disinheriting face I thought it! I don't mind telling you," the speaker continued, some disorder in his own looks, "that I awoke at three o'clock this morning, and I saw him as clearly as I see you now, and at that moment I wouldn't have given a thousand pounds for my chance of being Lord Audley this time two years!"

"Liver!" said Stubbs, unmoved. "Liver, my lord, asking your pardon! Nothing else--and the small hours. I've felt like that myself. Still, if you are really uneasy there is always a way out, though it may be impertinent of me to mention it."

"The old way?"

"You might marry Miss Audley. A handsome young lady, if I may presume to say so, of your own blood and name, and no disparagement except in fortune. After Mr. John, she is the next heir, and the match once made would checkmate any action on his part."

"I am afraid I could not afford such a marriage," Audley said coldly. "But I am to you. As for this news--" he flicked the newspaper that lay on the table--"it may be true or it may not. If it is true, it will alter many things. We shall see. If you hear anything fresh let me know."

Stubbs said that he would and took his leave, wondering a little, but having weightier things on his mind. He sought his home by back ways, for he did not wish to meet Dr. Pepper or Bagenal the brewer, or even the saddler, until he had considered what face he would put on Peel's latest move. He felt that his reputation for knowledge and sagacity was at stake.

Meanwhile his employer, left alone, fell to considering, not what face he should put upon the matter, but how he might at this crisis turn the matter and the borough to the best account. Certainly Stubbs was discouraging, but Stubbs was a fool. It was all very well for him; he drew his wages either way. But a man of the world did not cling to the credit of owning a borough for the mere name of the thing. If he were sensible he looked to get something more from it than that. And it was upon occasions such as this that the something more was to be had by those who knew how to go about the business.

Here, in fact, was the moment, if he was the man.