Now every Saturday, Maltravers received from the neighbouring town the provincial newspaper--it was his only medium of communication with the great world.

But it was not for that communication that he always seized it with avidity, and fed on it with interest.

The county in which his father resided bordered on the shire in which Ernest sojourned, and the paper included the news of that familiar district in its comprehensive columns.

It therefore satisfied Ernest's conscience and soothed his filial anxieties to read from time to time that "Mr.Maltravers was entertaining a distinguished party of friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court;" or that "Mr.Maltravers's foxhounds had met on such a day at something copse;" or that, "Mr.
Maltravers, with his usual munificence, had subscribed twenty guineas to the new county gaol."...

And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper laid beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope, and hastened to the well-known corner appropriated to the paternal district.