When the dog-cart had gone, with the Speaker stretched out in it, stiff as a dead horse, and one of the Keys to see him home, the other joined Stowell and walked down the road by his side.
"Then your Honour hasn't heard what has happened?"
"No. What?"
There had been a sitting of the Keys that morning. The debate had been on some new scheme of land tenure—a thinly disguised form of confiscation. The Speaker had opposed it passionately, saying a man had a right to keep what he had earned and hand it on to his children. Then Qualtrough (a firebrand who possessed nothing) had taunted him with the unfortunate affair of yesterday. Why did he want to hand on his land, his son having run away with the woman he had corrupted?
A terrible scene had followed. The Speaker had had one of his brain-storms. His neck had swelled until it was nearly as broad as his face. "Sit down, Sir," he had shouted, but Qualtrough had refused to do so. At length, overcome by the clamour of his enemies and the silence of his friends, the Speaker had risen to resign. Since he could not maintain the authority of the chair he had no choice but to get out of it.
It had been a pitiful spectacle. None of them who were fathers had been able to look at it with dry eyes. The old man was trembling like a leaf and his legs seemed to be giving way under him.
"They say the sins of the fathers are visited-upon the children, but maybe it's as true the other way about. I'm going blind and deaf. The sands of my life are running out...."
He swayed forward and they thought he would have fallen on his face, but the Secretary of the House caught him in his arms, and then two of them were nominated to bring him home.
"Sorry to say it to your Honour, being his friend," said the member of the Keys, as they parted at the turn of the road, "but that young fellow has something to answer for."
That lie had done harm then! Was this the mystery of sin—that it must go on and on, from consequence to consequence, deep as the sea and unsearchable as the night?