ted at the lost opportunity. "You'd have been much better than
that ass Hacking. If you and I had been the only people in it, I'll bet
the detectives would never have found him."

"And what's going to happen to the youth now?"

"Oh, his father's going to take him to Australia as he arranged. They
sail to-morrow. There's one thing," Mark added with a kind of gloomy
relish. "He's bound to go to the bad, and perhaps that'll be a lesson to
his father."

The hope of the Vicar of Meade Cantorum and equally it may be added the
hope of Mr. Lidderdale that the affair would be kept out of the papers
was not fulfilled. The day after Mr. Pomeroy and his son sailed from
Tilbury the following communication appeared in _The Times_:

Sir,--The accompanying letter was handed to me by my friend the
Reverend Eustace Pomeroy to be used as I thought fit and subject to
only one stipulation--that it should not be published until he and
his son were out of England. As President of the Society for the
Protection of the English Church against Romish Aggression I feel
that it is my duty to lay the facts before the country. I need
scarcely add that I have been at pains to verify the surprising and
alarming accusations made by a clergyman against two other
clergymen, and I earnestly request the publicity of your columns
for what I venture to believe is positive proof of the dangerous
conspiracy existing in our very midst to romanize the Established
Church of England. I shall be happy to produce for any of your
readers who find Mr. Pomeroy's story incredible at the close of the
nineteenth century the signed statements of witnesses and other
documentary evidence.

I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

Danvers.

The Right Honble. the Lord Danvers, P.C.

President of the Society for the Protection of the English Church
against Romish Aggression.

My Lord,

I have to bring to your notice as President of the S.P.E. C.R.A.
what I venture to assert is one of the most daring plots to subvert
home and family life in the interests of priestcraft that has ever
been discovered. In taking this step I am fully conscious of its
seriousness, and if I ask your lordship to delay taking any
measures for publicity until the unhappy principal is upon the high
seas in the guardianship of his even more unhappy fathe