As Phineas had formerly sat in the House for five years, and had been in office, and had never made himself objectionable either to his friends or adversaries, he had been widely known.

He now found half a dozen men who were always members of Parliament,--men who seem, though commoners, to have been born legislators,--who all spoke to him as though his being member for Tankerville and hunting with the Brake hounds were equally matters of course.

They knew him, but they knew nothing of the break in his life.

Or if they remembered that he had not been seen about the House for the last two or three years they remembered also that accidents do happen to some men.

It will occur now and again that a regular denizen of Westminster will get a fall in the political hunting-field, and have to remain about the world for a year or two without a seat.