We follow the sorter as he makes his way back into the post-office carriage, carrying with him the treasures we have watched him pick up by the wayside. These new arrivals disposed of in the orthodox way, and the process repeated two or three times, there is suddenly a movement among the officers as they busy themselves in collecting from the different boxes all the letters that have been received from first to last for the bags about to be despatched at the approaching town--the first junction station. The letters in question are examined to test the correctness of the sorting, then tied up in bundles in a sharp and decisive way, then placed away carefully in the several bags, which are tied, sealed, and ready for delivery just as the train is brought to a stand. Here they are given out; fresh supplies are received from a number of large towns in the immediate district, and the train is again on its way. The bags received are at once opened; the same round of sorting, collecting, examining, is gone through; the same process of despatching for the next and all subsequent postal stages is repeated, just as we have described. Little variation is noticed, except that at certain points a much larger number of bags are thrown into the office--for instance, as the train nears the more thickly populated parts of the midland counties, then the "black country," as it is called, and subsequently the manufacturing districts. At one of these points a considerable addition was made to the staff of sorters, who fell at once to work in the vacant spaces left for them. And it was not before they were required; for presently the train arrives at one of the principal mail junctions in the kingdom, where an immense number of bags wait our arrival. These bags have been brought somewhat earlier on, by other mail trains, arranged so as to effect a junction with us; these having in their turn met with other trains running across the country in transverse directions. Thus there are here, bags from towns near and towns remote, containing letters for places from which we are, as yet, hundreds of miles distant. The work, however, will be resumed with increased activity, according to the number of letters which may be forthcoming, only whatever number there may be, all must be finished in a given time. So far, the reader may imagine the duty to be one of dull routine and very monotonous; so as a rule we believe it is: there are circumstances connected with the manner of travelling, however, which conspire to make it at times somewhat varied and exceptional. One moment, and we are clattering down a hill, and the sorting partakes, to some extent, of the same tear-away speed; another time, we are panting up a line of steep gradient, and the letters find their boxes very deliberately; now, the rails are somewhat out of order, or the coupling of the carriages has not been well attended to, or we are winding round a succession of sharp curves, and can scarcely keep our feet as the carriage lurches first to one side, then to the other; in all which cases, not only is our own equilibrium a source of difficulty to us, but we see that things proceed anything but smoothly among the letters, which refuse to go in at all, or go in with a spirited evolution, fluttering outside, and then landing at their destination upside down, or in some other way transgressing official rules in such case made and provided. Then the work is accompanied to the different kinds of music, well known to "express travellers." Now the train is tearing away through a tunnel, or through an interminably long cutting of thick-ribbed stone, and then under or over a bridge. Nor is this all, nor the worst: these noises are very frequently varied by what is anything but a lively tune on the engine whistle, but which, supposing the signal lights to be against us, or Cerberus asleep at his post, is too often a round of screeching and screaming enough to waken the Seven Sleepers.