This process, reversed, had been at the same moment performed on the bag
given out by the train. To prevent the receiving and delivering
apparatus from causing mutual destruction in passing each other, the
former is affixed to the upper, the latter to the lower, part of the
van. There was a rather severe jerk. The junior sorter exerted his
powers, raised the net, and hauled in the bag, while the train with
undiminished speed went thundering on.

"What was that I saw on the floor?" asked the junior sorter, looking
anxiously round as he set the mail-bags down.

"Only two white mice," replied Bright, who was busy in front of his
pigeon-holes. "They nibbled themselves out of a parcel under my very
nose. I made a grab at 'em, but they were too quick for me."

"Isn't it strange," observed the registered-letter clerk, sealing one of
the bags which had just been made up, "that people _will_ break the law
by sending live animals through the post?"

"More strange, it seems to me," returned Bright, as he tied up a bundle
of letters, "that the people who do it can't pack 'em properly."

"There's the next station," said the junior sorter, proceeding once more
to the net.

"Whew!" shrieked the steam-whistle, as the train went crashing towards
the station. Bright looked out. The frame and its mail-bags were all
right and ready. The net was lowered. Another moment and the mail-bags
were swept into the van, while the out-going bags were swept off the
projecting arm into the fixed net of the station. The train went
through the station with a shriek and a roar. There was a bridge just
beyond. The junior sorter forgot to haul up the net, which caught some
object close to the bridge--no one knew what or how. No one ever does
on such occasions! The result was that the whole apparatus was
demolished; the side of the van was torn out, and Mr Bright and the
junior sorter, who were leaning against it at the time, were sent, in a
shower of woodwork, burst bags, and letters, into the air. The rest of
the van did not leave the rails, and the train shot out of sight in a
few seconds, like a giant war-rocket, leaving wreck and ruin behind!

There are many miraculous escapes in this world. Mr Bright and the
junior sorter illustrated this truth by rising unhurt from the debris of
their recent labours, and began sadly to collect the scattered mails.
These however were not, like their guardians, undamaged. There were
several fatal