news, he said, had reached the city the day before, having been conveyed there clandestinely. The packet agent or sub-agent at Ostend had sent it. Of this he held in his hand conclusive evidence. What means had been employed, and whether others were concerned in the nefarious transaction, it was for his hearers to ascertain; and the sooner they addressed themselves to the task the better. In short, the power of the purse had again prevailed, and the Post Office had been outwitted by the Stock Exchange. [32] Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Evelyn had recently succeeded Sir Robert Cotton as postmaster-general. It is difficult to suppose that the intelligence can have been conveyed from Ostend to London without Macky's connivance. And yet Frankland and Evelyn believed or affected to believe that he had had no hand in the business. Their position was, no doubt, one of embarrassment. Organised as the Post Office then was, they possessed no means of making an independent investigation. They contented themselves, therefore, with calling upon Macky to ascertain and report how it was that a letter from Ostend had reached London on Sunday, although on that day there had been no mail. The result might easily have been foreseen. Brown, the sub-agent at Ostend, whose letter it was, stood self-condemned, and Macky was required to dismiss him. And here the scandal ended. Macky's own character, with himself as reporter, may be presumed to have been cleared. At all events he appears to have been taken back into confidence, and, before many weeks were over, the postmasters-general had despatched him on an important mission. This mission was no other than to lay down posts for the army in Flanders. The tardiness with which intelligence arrived from the seat of war had long been matter of complaint. In the city especially the dissatisfaction had been intense, and the recent scandal had not been calculated to allay it. With a view to remedy this state of things, Godolphin called upon the postmasters-general to devise some means for securing more rapid communication. The army was now in the neighbourhood of Lisle, and operations were about to begin anew. There was, therefore, no time to be lost. The postmasters-general had recourse to Macky, and in a few days he produced a plan with which Godolphin expressed himself highly pleased. Between Lisle and Ostend, and between Ostend and other places where the army might be, stages were to be settled; at each stage were to be relays of horses with postilions ready to start at any moment; responsible persons were to be appointed to collect and deliver the letters and to receive the postage; and the postage was to be regulated by distance and to be at the same rates as in England, and to go to the English Post Office.