". . . I am much troubled about the disappearance of those letters, and would like to see them . . . There must be something in them which may throw light on this mysterious affair . . . I have no grounds for declaring this, but I think so . . . If Mr. Marson, who did not want his daughter to marry Melstane, wrote, his letters must be in that packet . . . It is his letters I wish to see . . . Now, however, by the unfortunate mistake of the postmistress, the letters are in the possession of Judas . . . This again implicates him in the affair . . . I don't like the attitude of Judas at all . . . Could he--but no, it's impossible; he has no motive . . . Sebastian Melstane was his friend, so there was no reason he should wish him out of the way . . . I believe that Judas holds the letters in order to make capital out of them with Mr. Marson . . . I'll thwart him on the point, however . . .
"_Mem_.--To see the postmistress to-morrow and find out for certain if the packet was delivered--as I verily believe--to Judas."
Suburban Ironfields being, as has been stated, a poor relation of the opulent city, fared badly enough in all respects, after the fashion of all poor relations. Every comfort, every luxury, every improvement pertaining to nineteenth century civilisation was to be found in Ironfields itself; but the quondam village from whence it had sprung retained many of its primitive barbarisms.
This was especially the case with the post office, a low-roofed, dingy little house squeezed into an odd corner of the crooked main street, and presided over by an elderly lady named Mrs. Wevelspoke and her son Abraham. Ironfields magnates--dwellers in the palatial residences beyond the village--received their correspondence straight from the prompt, businesslike office of the city itself; but this unhappy little town depended for the transmission and delivery of its letters on old Mrs. Wevelspoke and her snail-footed son.
Many complaints had been made about the disgraceful way in which this place was conducted; but as the complainants were mostly poor people, no attention was paid to their remonstrances, and Mrs. Wevelspoke and her son went on in their own quiet way, delivering letters late, delivering them to the wrong people, and very often not delivering them at all.