charmed. He could afford to let the grey rat
well out of sight, because the two brown rats, following in succession,
would, when he sprang on them, leave a trail of letters to point the
direction of their flight.

Just as the third rat dragged its missive behind the pelican of the
wilderness the watcher leaped upon them, and in his haste consigned the
pelican to all but irretrievable destruction! The rats vanished, but
left the tell-tale letters, the last two forming pointers to the first,
which was already half dragged through a slit between the skirting and
the wall. At the extremity of this slit yawned the gateway to the rats'
palace.

Mr Blurt rubbed his hands, chuckled, crowed internally, and, having
rescued the letters, went to bed.

Next morning, he procured a crowbar, and, with the able assistance of
George Aspel, tore off the skirting, uprooted a plank, and discovered a
den in which were stored thirty-one letters, six post-cards, and three
newspapers. [See Postmaster-General's Report for 1877, page 13.]

The corners of the letters, bearing the stamps, were nibbled away,
showing that gum--not money or curiosity--was the occasion of the theft.

As four of these letters contained cheques and money-orders, their
discovery afforded instant relief to the pressure which had been
gradually bearing with intolerable weight on the affairs of Messrs.
Blurt and Company.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE LETTER-CARRIER GOES HIS ROUNDS, AIDS A LITTLE GIRL, AND OVERWHELMS A
LADY STATISTICALLY.

Solomon Flint, being a man of letters, was naturally a hard-working man.
By night and by day did that faithful servant of his Queen and country
tramp through the streets of London with the letters of the lieges in
his care. The dim twilight of early morning found him poking about,
like a solitary ghoul, disembowelling the pillar posts. The rising sun
sent a deflected ray from chimney-pot or steeple to welcome him--when
fog and smoke permitted. The noon-tide beams broiled him in summer and
cheered him in winter on his benignant path of usefulness. The evening
fogs and glimmering lamps beheld him hard at work, and the nightly
returning stars winked at him with evident surprise when they found him
still fagging along through heat and cold, rain and snow, with the sense
of urgent duty ever present in his breast, and part of the recorded
hopes, joys, fears, sorrows, loves, hates, business, and humbug of the
world in his bag.

Be