mail 12.17 a.m., down mail 12.42 a.m.; Yatton, leave 1.5 a.m.; Clevedon,
arrive 1.48 a.m., depart 4.15 a.m.; Portishead, arrive 5.5 a.m.

The contractor, Mr. Dawes, now in the 66th year of his age, having
performed a part of his outward journey on the 19th September, 1902,
left Clevedon for Yatton quite sober as ever, and in his usual health.
Then comes the mystery. He did not reach Yatton in due course, and the
railway signalman intimated the failure to Bristol, from which office
the postmaster of Clevedon was advised, who at early dawn started out a
scout on a bicycle to search for the missing mailman and mail bags. The
scout discovered no signs of man or mails between Clevedon and the
Yatton apparatus station, and going back over the same ground, he
eventually met an individual who had seen an aged man with a whip in his
hand wandering on the road. This he knew to be his man, and he
discovered Dawes walking aimlessly along the road at about 7 a.m. His
explanations were not coherent. The horse had ran away with him, and
flung him off the cart into a ditch; he had tumbled off the cart, and
walked into a ditch; he had tried to knock people up to assist him in
trying to find what had become of the missing mails! In the meantime, a
farm labourer going out on to the Kingston Seymour moors to milk the
cows discovered the mail cart turned over on to its side, and thus
embedded in a rhine on the roadside. The horse also was in the rhine, up
to his back, partly in mud and partly in water. The milkman immediately
started off to Clevedon to give the alarm, and his employer, who was
accompanying him on his journey to the milking ground, took prompt
steps, in conjunction with moor men, to drag horse and vehicle out of
the mud and mire. Fortunately, the mailbags were uninjured, and the
postmaster of Clevedon, who had set out on a search, had them conveyed
back to his office. Dazed contractor Dawes, the muddy mail cart, and
horse coated with mud from head to hoofs, were got back into the town at
about 11 a.m. It would seem that the contractor fell asleep and tumbled
from his box into the road, and that his horse wandered on, grazing from
side to side of the road, till eventually in the dark of night horse and
cart fell into the rhine. On coming to himself, the contractor, after
trying in vain to arouse the inhabitants of roadside houses, wandered
about all night, or it may be laid down somewhere to await morning
light. The animal w