upon his face, as left no doubt upon our minds
that, the face which had haunted him so long,
had, in his last hour, disappeared.

No. 4 BRANCH LINE.
THE TRAVELLING POST-OFFICE.

Many years ago, and before this Line was so
much as projected, I was engaged as a clerk in
a Travelling' Post-office running along the Line
of railway from London to a town in the Midland
Counties, which we will call Fazeley. My duties
were to accompany the mail-train which left
Fazeley at 8.15 P.M., and arrived in London
about midnight, and to return by the day mail
leaving London at 10.30 the following morning,
after which I had an unbroken night at Fazeley,
while another clerk discharged the same round
of work; and in this way each alternate evening
I was on duty in the railway post-office van. At
first I suffered a little from a hurry and tremor
of nerve in pursuing my occupation while the
train was crashing along under bridges and
through tunnels at a speed which was then
thought marvellous and perilous; but it was not
long before my hands and eyes became accustomed
to the motion of the carriage, and I
could go through my business with the same
despatch and case as in the post-office of the
country town where I had learned it, and from
which I had been promoted by the influence of
the surveyor of the district, Mr. Huntingdon.
In fact, the work soon fell into a monotonous
routine, which, night after night, was pursued
in an unbroken course by myself and the junior
clerk, who was my only assistant: the railway
post-office work not having then attained the
importance and magnitude it now possesses.

Our route lay through an agricultural district
containing many small towns, which made
up two or three bags only; one for London;
another perhaps for the county town; a third
for the railway post-office, to be opened by us,
and the enclosures to be distributed according
to their various addresses. The clerks in many
of these small offices were women, as is very
generally the case still, being the daughters and
female relatives of the nominal postmaster, who
transact most of the business of the office, and
whose names are most frequently signed upon
the bills accompanying the bags. I was a young
man, and somewhat more curious in feminine
handwriting than I am now. There was one
family in particular, whom I had never seen, but
with whose signatures I was perfectly familiar—-
clear, delicate, and educated, very unlike the
miserable scrawl upon other letter-bills. One
New Year's-eve, in a moment of sentiment, I
tied a slip of paper among a bundle of letters for
their office, upon which I had written, " A
happy New Year to you all." The next evening
brought me a return of my good wishes, signed,
as I guessed, by three sisters of the name of
Clifton. From that day, every now and then,
a sentence or two as brief as the one above
passed between us, and the feeling of acquaintance
and friendship grew upon me, though
I had never yet had an opportunity of seeing my
fair unknown friends.

It was towards the close of the following
October that it came under my notice that the
then Premier of the ministry was paying an
autumn visit to a nobleman, whose country
seat, was situated near a small village on
our line of rail. The Premier's despatch-box,
containing, of course, all the despatches which
it was necessary to send down to him, passed
between him and the Secretary of State, and
was, as usual, entrusted to the care of the
post-office. The Continent was just then in a
more than ordinarily critical state; we were
thought to be upon the verge of an European
war; and there were murmurs floating about, at
the dispersion of the ministry up and down the
country. These circumstances made the charge
of the despatch-box the more interesting to me.
It was very similar in size and shape to the old-
fashioned workboxes used by ladies before boxes
of polished and ornamental wood came into
vogue, and, like them, it was covered with red
morocco leather, and it fastened with a lock and
key. The first time it came into my hands I
took such special notice of it as might be expected.
Upon one corner of the lid I detected
a peculiar device scratched slightly upon it,
most probably with the sharp point of a steel
pen, in such a moment of preoccupation of mind
as causes most of us to draw odd lines and caricatured
faces upon any piece of paper which may
lie under our hand. It was the old revolutionary
device of a heart with a dagger piercing it; and
I wondered whether it could be the Premier, or
one of his secretaries, who had traced it upon
the morocco.

This box had been travelling up and down
for about ten days, and, as the village did not
make up a bag for London, there being very
few letters excepting  those from the great
house, the letter-bag from the house, and the
despatch-box, were handed direct into our travelling
post-office. But in compliment to the presence
of the Premier in the neighbourhood, the
train, instead of slackening speed only, stopped
altogether, in order that the Premier's trusty
and confidential messenger might deliver the
important box into my own hands, that its perfect
safety might be ensured. I had an undefined
suspicion that some person was also employed
to accompany the train up to London,
tor three or four times I had met with a foreign-
looking gentleman at Euston-square, standing
at the door of the carriage nearest the post-
office van, and eyeing the heavy bags as they
were transferred from my care to the custody
of the officials from the General Post-office.
But though I felt amused and somewhat nettled
at this needless precaution, I took no further
notice of the man, except to observe that he
had the swarthy aspect of a foreigner, and that
he kept his face well away from the light of the
lamps. Except for these things, and after the
first time or two, the Premier's despatch-box
interested me no more than any other part of
my charge. My work had been doubly