To-morrow morning we were to start.
To-morrow morning was too late.
With an effort I opened the morning paper—the Morning Post, as it happened—and ran hastily up and down the columns, active exercise having been recommended to me. What cared I for politics, foreign news, or even the sportive intelligence? All I sought for was a paragraph headed ‘Horrible Disclosures,’ or, ‘Awful Death of a Baronet.’ I ran up and down the columns in vain.
No such item of news met my eye. Joyously I rose to go, when my eye fell on the Standard.
Mechanically I opened it.
Those words were written (or so they seemed to me to be written) in letters of fire, though the admirable press at Shoe Lane did not really employ that suitable medium.
‘Horrible Discovery near Roding.’
At once the truth flashed across me. The Morning Post had not contained the intelligence because,
The Government had Boycotted the ‘Morning Post’!
Only journals which more or less supported the Government were permitted to obtain ‘copy’ of such thrilling interest!