time endeavored to keep his distance, but his endeavors were not altogether effectual. Whenever he could escape for a day or two from the lawyers, he ran down to Chaldicotes; but Tom Tozer, in his perseverance, followed him there, and boldly sent in his name by the servant at the front door.
"Mr. Sowerby is not just at home at the present moment," said the well-trained domestic.
"I'll wait about then," said Tom, seating himself on an heraldic stone griffin which flanked the big stone steps before the house. And in this way Mr. Tozer gained his purpose. Sowerby was still contesting the county, and it behooved him not to let his enemies say that he was hiding himself. It had been a part of his bargain with Miss Dunstable that he should contest the county. She had taken it into her head that the duke had behaved badly, and she had resolved that he should be made to pay for it. "The duke," she said, "had meddled long enough;" she would now see whether the Chaldicotes interest would not suffice of itself to return a member for the county, even in opposition to the duke. Mr. Sowerby himself was so harassed at the time, that he would have given way on this point if he had had the power; but Miss Dunstable was determined, and he was obliged to yield to her. In this, manner Mr. Tom Tozer succeeded and did make his way into Mr. Sowerby's presence, of which intrusion one effect was the following letter from Mr. Sowerby to his friend Mark Robarts:
"Chaldicotes, July, 185-.
"My dear Robarts,—I am so harassed at the present moment by an infinity of troubles of my own that I am almost callous to those of other people. They say that prosperity makes a man selfish. I have never tried that, but I am quite sure that adversity does so. Nevertheless, I am anxious about those bills of yours"—
"Bills of mine!" said Robarts to himself, as he walked up and down the shrubbery path at the Parsonage, reading this letter. This happened a day or two after his visit to the lawyer at Barchester.
"—and would rejoice greatly if I thought that I could save you from any farther annoyance about them. That kite, Tom Tozer, has just been with me, and insists that both of them shall be paid. He knows—no one better—that no consideration was given for the latter. But he knows also that the dealing was not with him, nor even with his brother, and he will be prepared to swear that he gave value for both. He
