Preface.
This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the
Postmaster-General's Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal
intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and
its Branches.
It is intended to illustrate--not by any means to exhaust--the subject
of postal work, communication, and incident throughout the Kingdom.
I have to render my grateful acknowledgments to SIR ARTHUR BLACKWOOD;
his private secretary, CHARLES EDEN, ESQUIRE; and those other officers
of the various Departments who have most kindly afforded me every
facility for investigation, and assisted me to much of the information
used in the construction of the tale.
If it does not greatly enlighten, I hope that it will at all events
interest and amuse the reader.
R.M. BALLANTYNE.
CHAPTER ONE.
A HERO AND HIS WORSHIPPER.
Once upon a time--only once, observe, she did not do it twice--a widow
of the name of Maylands went, in a fit of moderate insanity, and took up
her abode in a lonely, tumble-down cottage in the west of Ireland.
Mrs Maylands was very poor. She was the widow of an English clergyman,
who had left her with a small family and the smallest income that was
compatible with that family's maintenance. Hence the migration to
Ireland, where she had been born, and where she hoped to live
economically.
The tumble-down cottage was near the sea, not far from a little bay
named Howlin Cove. Though little it was a tremendous bay, with mighty
cliffs landward, and jutting ledges on either side, and forbidding rocks
at the entrance, which waged continual warfare with the great Atlantic
billows that rolled into it. The whole place suggested shipwreck and
smugglers.
