At noon next day it was noticed at various offices that the messages received bore the signatures of strange senders at the other end of the wires. The fact occasioned no little comment, and the telegraphists of Bradford, Hull, and elsewhere, and in all the offices which of late had made themselves prominent in agitation, were not long in arriving at the correct conclusion. The storm had come, and they had got to face it, as they relied on their comrades in other distant towns also facing it. The same method of procedure happened everywhere, and in every affected office alike. A man was mysteriously sent away from his instrument and did not return, then another, and another. Meanwhile those remaining at the instruments were endeavouring to obtain some information from the other end, but to all their inquiries there was dead silence, and they realised that their interrogations had only met with the fate of being silently recorded against them many miles away. Then some one in the room would break the tension of silence, and they would troop out in a body, knowing as if by instinct that the same was being faithfully enacted elsewhere. Then in most cases as they trooped out from the instrument-room they would be confronted with several burly town policemen, who would half direct, half hustle them into another room, where they were virtually made prisoners awaiting the pleasure of the local postmaster. In some cases the postmaster would carry out his official instruction neatly and politely. If it were so, all went well; but in several instances the blundering over-zeal of an unpopular martinet nearly precipitated a riot. There is reason to think that the official instruction from London was to the effect that it should be effected as quietly and as discreetly as possible, and with few exceptions the delicate task of the postmasters was so carried out. Then while the telegraphists were waiting the arrival of the postmaster and other officials from whom they were to learn what was expected of them, a number of strangers newly arrived from London took their vacant places in the instrument-room. That being done, the door would be opened and the work of inquisition began. Generally the local postmaster would be accompanied by the officials, and in some cases by the influential public men of the town, the mayor or the vicar. They were admonished for their behaviour in leaving their instruments in the manner they had, even though it had been so confidently expected that they would act so, and they were offered the opportunity of going back to their work, but on conditions which they as a body could not accept.