the parts
of a carriage to extremely violent shocks. Hence the bag-catching
affair is a powerful iron frame with rope netting, the moving of which,
although aided by a pulley and heavy weight, tries the strength of a
strong man.

Nimbly worked the sorters, as they swept by town and field, village,
tunnel, bridge, and meadow,--for time may not be wasted when space
between towns is being diminished at the rate of forty or fifty miles an
hour, and chaos has to be reduced to order. The registered-letter clerk
sat in one corner in front of a set of special pigeon-holes, with a
sliding cover, which could be pulled over all like a blind and locked if
the clerk should have occasion to quit his post for a moment. While
some were sorting, others were bagging and sealing the letters.
Presently the junior sorter, whose special duty it is to manipulate the
net, became aware that a bag-exchanging station drew near. His eyes
might have assured him of this, but officers of the Travelling
Post-Office become so expert with their ears as to know stations by the
peculiarity of the respective sounds connected with them--caused, it
might be, by the noise of tunnels, cuttings, bridges, or even slighter
influences.

Going quietly to the apparatus above referred to, the junior sorter
looked out at the window and lowered the net, which, instead of lying
flat against the van, now projected upwards of three feet from it. As
he did so something flashed about his feet. He leaped aside and gave a
shout. Fearful live creatures were sometimes sent by post, he knew, and
serpents had been known before that to take an airing in Post-Office
vans as well as in the great sorting-room of St. Martin's-le-Grand! A
snake had only a short time before been observed at large on the floor
of one of the night mail sorting carriages on the London and
North-Western Railway, which, after a good deal of confusion and
interruption to the work, was killed. This flashed into his mind, but
the moment was critical, and the junior sorter had no time to indulge in
private little weaknesses. Duty required prompt action.

About a hundred yards from the approaching station, a mail-bag hung
suspended from a massive wooden frame. The bag weighed nearly eighty
pounds. It was fitted so exactly in its place, with reference to the
approaching train, that its neck was caught to a nicety in a fork, which
swept it with extreme violence off its hook, and laid it in the net.