It was at this point that inspiration came to Mr. Joshua. "Why not a telegram?" he suggested. "As his aunt, ma'am, you might suggest a sea voyage for the child, and leave it to me to word it strongly." "If I wasn't a married woman," said Mrs. Purchase, "I could openly bless the hour I made your acquaintance." Between the despatch of Mr. Joshua's telegram and the receipt of his answer there was weary waiting for all but the two children. They, content in the moment's bliss, secure of the future, being reunited, neither asked nor doubted. Yet they missed something--the glad, astounded surprise of their elders as Mr. Joshua, having taken the yellow envelope from Mrs. Purchase, whose courage failed her, broke it open, and read aloud, "_Leave child in your hands. Only do not bring him home_." It was a happy party that travelled back that night to Blackfriars; and Mr. Joshua, after shaking hands with everybody many times over, and promising to eat his Christmas dinner on board the _Virtuous Lady_, walked homeward to his solitary lodgings elate, treading the frosty pavement with an unaccustomed springiness of step. He had vindicated the Power of the Press. CHAPTER XXV. BUT TOM CAN WRITE. "A letter for you, Mrs. Trevarthen!" Spring had come. The flight and finding of Myra had long since ceased to be a nine days' wonder, and she and Clem and Tom Trevarthen--received back into favour, and in some danger of being petted by Mrs. Purchase, who had never been known to pet a seaman--were shipmates now on board the _Virtuous Lady_, and had passed for many weeks now beyond ken of the little port. A new schoolmistress reigned in Hester's stead, since Hester, with the New Year, had taken over the care of the Widows' Houses. In his counting-house at Hall Samuel Rosewarne sat day after day transacting his business without a clerk, speaking seldom, shunned by all--even by his own son; a man afraid of himself. Susannah declared that the house was like a tomb, and vowed regularly on Monday mornings to give 'warning' at the next week-end. The villagers, accustomed to the Rosewarne tyranny for generations, had found it hard to believe in their release. Lady Killiow was little more than a name to them, Rosewarne a very present steward and master of their lives; and at first, when Peter Benny engaged workmen to pull down Nicky Vro's cottage and erect a modest office on its site, they admired his temerity, but awoke each morning to fresh wonder that no thunderbolt from Hall had descended during the night and razed his work to the ground. The new ferryman had vanished too, paid off and discharged for flagrant drunkenness, and his place was taken by old Billy Daddo the Methodist--a change so comfortable and (when you come to think of it) a choice so happy, that the villagers, after the shock of surprise, could hardly believe they had not suggested it. If they did not quite forget Nicky and his sorrows--if in place of Nicky's pagan chatter