Dear Mr. Lidderdale, My son Cyril will not attend school for the rest of this term. Yesterday evening, being confined to the house by fever, I went up to his bedroom to verify a reference in a book I had recently lent him to assist his divinity studies under you. When I took down the book from the shelf I noticed several books hidden away behind, and my curiosity being aroused I examined them, in case they should be works of an unpleasant nature. To my horror and disgust, I found that they were all works of an extremely Popish character, most of them belonging to a clergyman in this neighbourhood called Ogilvie, whose illegal practices have for several years been a scandal to this diocese. These I am sending to the Bishop that he may see with his own eyes the kind of propaganda that is going on. Two of the books, inscribed Mark Lidderdale, are evidently the property of your nephew to whom I suppose my son is indebted for this wholesale corruption. On questioning my son I found him already so sunk in the mire of the pernicious doctrines he has imbibed that he actually defied his own father. I thrashed him severely in spite of my fever, and he is now under lock and key in his bedroom where he will remain until he sails with me to Sydney next week whither I am summoned to the conference of Australasian missionaries. During the voyage I shall wrestle with the demon that has entered into my son and endeavour to persuade him that Jesus only is necessary for salvation. And when I have done so, I shall leave him in Australia to earn his own living remote from the scene of his corruption. In the circumstances I assume that you will deduct a proportion of his school fees for this term. I know that you will be as much horrified and disgusted as I was by your nephew's conduct, and I trust that you will be able to wrestle with him in the Lord and prove to him that Jesus only is necessary to salvation. Yours very truly, Eustace Pomeroy. P.S. I suggest that instead of £6 6s. 0d. I should pay £5 5s. 0d. for this term, plus, of course, the usual extras. The pulse in Mr. Lidderdale's temple had never throbbed so remarkably as while Mark was reading this letter. "A fine thing," he ranted, "if this story gets about in Slowbridge. A fine reward for all my kindness if you ruin my school. As for this man Ogilvie, I'll sue him for damages. Don't look at me with that expression of bestial defiance. Do you hear? What prevents my thrashing you as you deserve? What prevents me, I say?"