Post Haste

Post Haste, by R.M. Ballantyne

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Title: Post Haste
Author: R.M. Ballantyne
Release Date: June 6, 2007 [EBook #21693]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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HASTE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

POST HASTE, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.
Preface.
This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the
Postmaster-General's Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal
intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and

its Branches.
It is intended to illustrate--not by any means to exhaust--the subject of
postal work, communication, and incident throughout the Kingdom.
I have to render my grateful acknowledgments to SIR ARTHUR
BLACKWOOD; his private secretary, CHARLES EDEN, ESQUIRE;
and those other officers of the various Departments who have most
kindly afforded me every facility for investigation, and assisted me to
much of the information used in the construction of the tale.
If it does not greatly enlighten, I hope that it will at all events interest
and amuse the reader.
R.M. BALLANTYNE.
CHAPTER ONE.
A HERO AND HIS WORSHIPPER.
Once upon a time--only once, observe, she did not do it twice--a widow
of the name of Maylands went, in a fit of moderate insanity, and took
up her abode in a lonely, tumble-down cottage in the west of Ireland.
Mrs Maylands was very poor. She was the widow of an English
clergyman, who had left her with a small family and the smallest
income that was compatible with that family's maintenance. Hence the
migration to Ireland, where she had been born, and where she hoped to
live economically.
The tumble-down cottage was near the sea, not far from a little bay
named Howlin Cove. Though little it was a tremendous bay, with
mighty cliffs landward, and jutting ledges on either side, and forbidding
rocks at the entrance, which waged continual warfare with the great
Atlantic billows that rolled into it. The whole place suggested
shipwreck and smugglers.
The small family of Mrs Maylands consisted of three babes--so their

mother styled them. The eldest babe, Mary--better known as May--was
seventeen years of age, and dwelt in London, to which great city she
had been tempted by an elderly English cousin, Miss Sarah Lillycrop,
who held out as baits a possible situation and a hearty welcome.
The second babe, Philip, was verging on fifteen. Having kicked,
crashed, and smashed his way though an uproarious infancy and a
stormy childhood, he had become a sedate, earnest, energetic boy, with
a slight dash of humour in his spirit, and more than a dash of
determination.
The third babe was still a baby. As it plays little or no part in our tale
we dismiss it with the remark that it was of the male sex, and was at
once the hope, fear, joy and anxiety of its distracted mother. So, too, we
may dismiss Miss Madge Stevens, a poor relation, who was worth her
weight in gold to the widow, inasmuch as she acted the part of general
servant, nurse, mender of the household garments, and recipient of joys
and sorrows, all of which duties she fulfilled for love, and for just
shelter and sustenance sufficient to keep her affectionate spirit within
her rather thin but well-favoured body.
Phil Maylands was a hero-worshipper. At the time when our tale opens
he worshipped a youth--the son of a retired naval officer,--who
possessed at least some of the qualities that are occasionally found in a
hero. George Aspel was daring, genial, enthusiastic, tall,
broad-shouldered, active, and young--about twenty. But George had a
tendency to dissipation.
His father, who had recently died, had been addicted to what he styled
good-fellowship and grog. Knowing his so-called weakness, Captain
Aspel had sent his boy to be brought up in the family of the Reverend
James Maylands, but some time before the death of that gentleman he
had called him home to help to manage the small farm with which he
amused his declining years. George and his father amused themselves
with it to such an extent that they became bankrupt about the time of
the father's death, and thus the son was left with the world before him
and nothing whatever in his pocket except a tobacco-pipe and a
corkscrew.

One day Phil met George Aspel taking a ramble and joined him. These
two lived near to each other. Indeed, Mrs Maylands had been partly
influenced in her choice of a residence by her desire to be near George.
It