ecame on a sudden
violently hot,--so that the sweat broke out on his forehead. Here was
the whole thing disclosed at once,--disclosed to all the world if he
chose to disclose it. But if he did so, then there could not be any need
for that journey to Sydney, which Sir John still thought to be
expedient. And this thing which he had now seen was not one within his
own branch of work,--was not a matter with which he was bound to be
conversant. Somebody else ought to have found it out. His own knowledge
was purely accidental. There would be no disgrace to him in not finding
it out. But he had found it out.

Bagwax was a man who, in his official zeal and official capacity, had
exercised his intellect far beyond the matters to which he was bound to
apply himself in the mere performance of his duties. Post-marks were
his business; and had he given all his mind to postmarks, he would have
sufficiently carried out that great doctrine of doing the duty which
England expects from every man. But he had travelled beyond postmarks,
and had looked into many things. Among other matters he had looked into
penny stamps, twopenny stamps, and other stamps. In post-office
phraseology there is sometimes a confusion because the affixed effigy of
her Majesty's head, which represents the postage paid, is called a
stamp, and the postmarks or impressions indicating the names of towns
are also called stamps. Those postmarks or impressions had been the work
of Bagwax's life; but his zeal, his joy in his office, and the general
energy of his disposition, had opened up to him also all the mysteries
of the queen's heads. That stamp, that effigy, that twopenny
queen's-head, which by its presence on the corner of the envelope
purported to have been the price of conveying the letter from Sydney to
Nobble, on 10th May, 1873, had certainly been manufactured and sent out
to the colony since that date!

There are signs invisible to ordinary eyes which are plain as the sun at
noonday to the initiated. It is so in all arts, in all sciences. Bagwax
was at once sure of his fact. To his instructed gaze the little receipt
for twopence was as clearly dated as though the figures were written on
it. And yet he had never looked at it before. In the absorbing interest
which the postmark had created,--that fraudulent postmark as it
certainly was,--he had never condescended to examine the postage-stamp.
But now he saw and was certain.

If it was so,--and he had no doub