The memorandum was, moreover, without head or tail--it had no superscription to indicate whence it had come, nor had it a signature to show by whom it had been written. The circumstance being one of an exceptional character, special steps were taken with a view to trace the owner, and an advertisement was inserted in several of the metropolitan newspapers--bringing up, it is true, a responsive crop of claimants for lost notes, but without eliciting any such claims as would warrant the surrender of the note in question. From the terms of the memorandum in the letter, and the fact that it was anonymous, the suggestion readily arose that whoever had had the note last had not come by it in the regular way of business; and this idea was strengthened by the discovery that the note had been paid over by a bank about eight years previously to a person whose name and address were endorsed upon it; and from that period the note had evidently not been in circulation. It was thought probable that the endorser had lost the note in some way shortly after receiving it, and that coming into the hands of some individual who feared to put it in circulation, it had been kept up during these eight years. Meanwhile, the right to receive the note not having been established by any one, the amount was paid in to the Revenue. In the Postmaster-General's report for 1881, further mention was made of the finding of the note in the Dead-letter Office, and several claims again reached headquarters, one of which proved to be so far good, that, when the facts had been fully investigated, the amount was paid over to the claimant. It appeared that the person whose name was endorsed on the note received it in part payment of a cheque cashed by him in 1872, when he was bought out of the business in which he had till then been a partner. Two years afterwards--viz., in 1874--he died, and his widow was unaware at the time that the note had been lost. From circumstances which this lady was able to prove, however, there seemed to be every reason to believe that her husband (whose practice it was to endorse notes when he had received them) had by some means lost the note, or that it had been carelessly left by him in some old book or other papers which were sold as waste-paper after her husband's death; and thus the Post-office was made the means of restoring a considerable sum of money to the rightful owner, while the person who had without title possessed it in the interval dared not claim it. "A letter said to have been posted by a person at Fochabers, enclosing a letter of credit for £50, was supposed to have been appropriated by an officer of the Post-office; but on inquiry it was ascertained that, instead of posting the letter himself, as he asserted, the writer had intrusted it to a servant, who had destroyed the letter, and had attempted to negotiate the order."