Happening at this particular time, in view of his strained relations with Lord Salisbury, election by such a constituency would have placed Lord Randolph in a position of personal influence not equalled by that of any private member. The moment seemed ripe for the birth of an organized party raising the standard of social Toryism, and under that or any other flag there are always ready to rally round Lord Randolph a number of Conservatives sufficient to make things uncomfortable at Hatfield. He had only to go in and win, and had he been inclined to play his own game he would have done so. But it was represented to him that his candidature was distasteful to a powerful ally of the Government; that if he insisted in accepting the invitation, the compact between Dissenting Liberals and the Conservatives would be straightway broken up; and that thereupon Mr. Gladstone would romp in with his Home Rule Bill. It was a bitter pill. But Lord Randolph swallowed it. Unmoved by the angry, almost passionate, protestations of the deputation from Birmingham that waited upon him, he withdrew his candidature, sacrificing himself and his prospects on the party shrine.
Now, Lord Randolph, travelling on other less independent and less interesting lines, seems half inclined to make his way back.
_NOTE._--"_PICTURES AND PAINTERS OF 1893," an Illustrated Guide to the Royal Academy and the other chief picture exhibitions, being the Fine Art Supplement of "THE STRAND MAGAZINE" and "THE PICTURE MAGAZINE," and containing 112 pages of pictures, with portraits of artists, beautifully reproduced on tinted papers in a variety of colours, will be published as early as possible in May. Price 1s._
The one afternoon train was due at Middleford, a small, straggling, and not very prosperous town, where terminated a branch line from a junction on the South-Western Railway--a line for which, after long-protracted opposition and delay, a grant had been obtained too late, traffic having merged in the direction of a neighbouring place.
As the train drew up at the platform, one passenger only, a young man of about eight or nine and twenty, stepped out and stood for a few moments looking about him as if in some uncertainty. He was, in fact, debating with himself as to whether he would, after all, pay the chance visit he had gone there to make.