Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England POST HASTE, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE. 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. The small family of Mrs Maylands consisted of three babes--so their mother styled them. The eldest babe, Mary--better known as May--was seventeen years of age, and dwelt in London, to which great city she had been tempted by an elderly English cousin, Miss Sarah Lillycrop, who held out as baits a possible situation and a hearty welcome. The second babe, Philip, was verging on fifteen. Having kicked, crashed, and smashed his way though an uproarious infancy and a stormy childhood, he had become a sedate, earnest, energetic boy, with a slight dash of humour in his spirit, and more than a dash of determination.