"No, sur, not wan," answered Mike, with something of a twinkle in his eye; "but I've left wan at Rocky Cottage," he added, turning to Philip Maylands. "Was it May's handwriting?" asked the boy eagerly. "Sure I don't know for sartin whose hand it is i' the inside, but it's not Miss May's on the cover. Niver a wan in these parts could write like her--copperplate, no less." "Come, George, let's go back," said Phil, quickly, "we've been looking out for a letter for some days past." "It's not exactly a letter, Master Phil," said the post-runner slowly. "Ah, then, she'd never put us off with a newspaper," said Phil. "No, it's a telegram," returned Mike. Phil Maylands looked thoughtfully at the ground. "A telegram," he said, "that's strange. Are ye sure, Mike?" "Troth am I." Without another word the boy started off at a quick walk, followed by his friend and the post-runner. The latter had to diverge at that place to leave a letter at the house of a man named Patrick Grady. Hence, for a short distance, they followed the same road. Young Maylands would have passed the house, but as Grady was an intimate friend of George Aspel, he agreed to stop just to shake hands. Patrick Grady was the soul of hospitality. He was not to be put off with a mere shake of the hand, not he--telegrams meant nothing now-a-days, he said, everybody sent them. No cause for alarm. They must stop and have a glass of mountain dew. Aspel was resolute, however; he would not sit down, though he had no objection to the mountain dew. Accordingly, the bottle was produced, and a full glass was poured out for Aspel, who quaffed off the pure spirit with a free-and-easy toss and smack of the lips, that might have rendered one of the beery old sea-kings envious. "No, sur, I thank ye," said Mike, when a similar glass was offered to him. "What! ye haven't taken the pledge, have ye?" said Grady. "No, sur; but I've had three glasses already on me walk, an' that's as much as I can rightly carry." "Nonsense, Mike. You've a stiff climb before you--here, take it off." The facile postman did take it off without further remonstrance. "Have a dhrop, Phil?" "No, thank ee," said Phil, firmly, but without giving a reason for declining. Being a boy, he was not pressed to drink, and the party left the house. A short distance farther on the road forked, and here the post-runner turned off to the right, taking the path which led towards the hill whose rugged shoulder he had yet to scale.