“No, no,” said Nicky-Nan hastily.  “Here, hold hard a moment—­Is it in Pamphlett’s hand-writin’ by any chance?”

The question wounded Lippity-Libby’s feelings, and he showed it.  “As if I shouldn’ ha’ told you!” he protested, gently reproachful.

“Nor his clerk’s?”

“What, Hendy?—­Hendy makes all his long letters straight up an’ down, while these be made with loops.  The writin’s sloped backwards too, with a rake on it, same as was fash’nable on some o’ the tea-clippers in my young days, but now ’tis seldom carried ’nless by a few steam-yachts.”

“Well, hand me over the thing—­I’ll risk it,” said Nicky-Nan.

He took the missive and glanced at the address—­“Mr N. Nanjivell, Naval Reservist, Polpier R.S.O., Cornwall.”  The words “Naval Reservist” underlined gave him a tremor.  But it was too late to draw back.  He broke open the envelope, drew forth the letter, unfolded it, and ran his eye hurriedly overleaf, seeking the signature.

“Why, ‘tisn’ signed!”

“Not signed?” echoed Lippity-Libby.  “That’s as much as to say ‘nonymous.”  Suddenly he slapped his thigh.  “There now!  O’ course—­ why, what a forgetful head is mine!  And simme I knew that hand, too, all the while.”

“Eh?”

“Yes, to be sure—­’tis the same that, up to two years ago, used to write an’ send all the ’nonymous letters in Polpier.  The old woman an’ I, we tracked it down to one of two, an’ both females.  It lay between ’em, and I was for old Ann’ Bunney—­she bein’ well known for a witch.  But now that can’t be, for the woman’s gone to Satan these three months. . . .  An’ my missus gone too—­poor tender heart—­an’ lookin’ down on me, that was rash enough to bet her sixpence on it, an’ now no means to pay up.”

“Who was the other?” demanded Nicky-Nan, frowning over the letter, his face flushing as he frowned.

“You’re goin’ to read it to me, ben’t you?”

“Damned if I do,” answered Nicky-Nan curtly.  “But I’d like to know who wrote it.”

“It don’t stand with Government reggilations, as I read ’em,” said Lippity-Libby, “for a postman to be tellin’ who wrote every ’nonymous letter he carries. . . .  Well, I be wastin’ time; but if you’ll take my advice, Mr Nanjivell, and it isn’ too late, you’ll marry a woman.  She’ll probably increase your comfort, and—­I don’t care who she is—­ she’ll work out another woman that writes ’nonymous.  Like a stoat in a burrow she will, specially if she happens to take in washin’ same as my lost Sarah did.  She was shown a ’nonymous letter with ’Only charitable to warn’ in it.  Dang me, if she didn’ go straight an’ turn up a complaint about ‘One chemise torn in wash,’ an’ showed me how, though sloped different ways, the letters were alike, twiddles an’ all, to the very daps.  I wouldn’ believe it at the time, the party bein’ a female in good position.  But my wife was certain of it, an’ all the more because she never allowed to her last breath that the woman’s shimmy had been torn at all.  Well, so long!”