the post-office a very portentous-looking letter, heavily
sealed, and marked "On Her Majesty's Service," he duly stopped the two
or three English loungers he saw about to show them the document, on
pretence of asking if any demand for postage could be made; if it had
not been wrongfully detained; if they thought it had been opened and
read; and so on,--all these inquiries having for their object to inform
the general public that the Member for Inch was in close relation and
correspondence with Downing Street.

In sooth, the letter had as significant an external as any gentleman in
pursuit of a place might have desired. In color, texture, and fashion
there was nothing wanting to its authenticity, and it might, without any
disparagement to its outside, have named Mr. O'Shea a Governor of
the Bahamas, or a Mahogany Commissioner at Ruatan. It was, in fact,
a document that, left negligently in the way, might have made a dun
appeasable, and a creditor patient There were few men it might not in
some degree have imposed on, but of that few the O'Shea himself was one.
He knew well--too well--that it foretold neither place nor employment;
that it was the shell of a very small kernel; nothing more, in short,
than a note from an old friend and schoolfellow, then acting as the
Private Secretary of a Cabinet Minister,--one who, indeed, kept his
friend O'Shea fully informed as to everything that fell vacant,
but, unhappily, accompanied the intelligence with a catalogue of
the applicants, usually something like the list of the Smiths in a
Directory.

So little impatient was O'Shea for the contents, that he had half eaten
his breakfast and looked through "Punch" before he broke the seal.
The enclosure was from the hand of his friend Tom Radwell, but whose
peculiar drollery it was to correspond in the form of a mock despatch.
The note, therefore, though merely containing gossip, was written with
all attention to margin and calligraphy, and even in places affected the
solemn style of the Office. It was headed "Secret and Confidential," and
opened thus:--

"Sir,--By your despatch of the 18th ult, containing four
enclosures,--three protested bills, and your stepmother's I O for 18L.
5s.,--I am induced to believe that no material change has occurred in
the situation of your affairs,--a circumstance the more to be deplored,
inasmuch as her Majesty's Government cannot at this moment, with that
due regard imposed on them for the public serv