Lady Tichborne’s pertinacity, while it had failed to restore her son, had not been without its collateral effects. Among them was the wide dissemination of a romantic story and the enlistment of public sympathy. A large part of the newspaper-reading British populace soon came to look upon the lady as a high example of motherly devotion, to sympathize with her point of view, and gradually to conclude that she was right, and that Roger Tichborne was indeed alive, somewhere in the antipodes. This belief was not entirely confined to emotional strangers, as appears from the fact that Kate Doughty, the object of the young nobleman’s bootless love, refused various offers of marriage and steadfastly remained single, pending a termination of all doubt as to the fate of her hapless lover. Thus, in one way and another, a great legend grew up. The Tichborne case came to be looked upon in some quarters as another of the great mysteries of disappearance. In various distant lands volunteer seekers took up the quest for Roger Tichborne, impelled sometimes by the fascinating powers of mystery, but more often by the hope of reward. In 1865 a man named Cubitt started a missing friends’ bureau in Sydney, New South Wales, a fact which he advertised in the London newspapers. Lady Tichborne, still far from satisfied of her son’s death, saw the notice in _The Times_ and communicated with Cubitt. As a result of this contact, Lady Tichborne was notified, in November, 1865, that a man had been discovered who answered the description of her missing “boy.” This fellow had been found keeping a small butcher shop in the town of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, and was there known by the name of Thomas Castro, which he admitted to be assumed. Lady Tichborne, excited and elated, communicated at once and did not fail to give the impression that the discovery and return of her eldest son would be a feat to earn a very high reward, since he was the heir to a large property, and since she was herself “most anxious to hear.” Australia was then, to be sure, much farther away than to-day. There were no cables and only occasional steamers. It often took months for a letter to pass back and forth. Thus, after painful delays, Lady Tichborne received a second communication in which she was told that there could be little doubt about the identification, as the butcher of Wagga Wagga had owned to several persons that he was indeed not Thomas Castro, but a British “nobleman” in disguise, and to at least one person that he was none other than Roger Tichborne.