One evening, in his quiet simple manner, the blind Postmaster-General presented himself at the General Post-Office unannounced and asked to be taken over the sorting department, and to have things explained to him. The scene was one of bustle and confusion; and the dull roar and the clank of stamping machinery, and the movements of hundreds of men in a confined space, filled the overburdened air. He was conducted to a position on the gallery overlooking the busy, crowded Letter Branch, which to ordinary eyes resembled nothing so much as an overturned ant-hill. Mr. Fawcett’s form and features were not familiar to the majority; but presently the whisper went round that the tall, silent man, seeming to stare down upon them through the big black spectacles which hid his closed eyes, was the Postmaster-General himself. For a few moments strict discipline was forgotten in curiosity, and few could really believe that one who could so intently follow the movements of the throbbing machinery below, as he did, could be wholly blind. They did not comprehend to the full the pathos of it; they did not know that this was only a habit he had schooled himself into to hide his infirmity. Nor did they know that in him they looked on the first Postmaster-General who had come among them with an honest desire to prove their benefactor. It chanced—or it may have been that Mr. Fawcett himself preferred it—that a young junior sorter was deputed to take him over the building. The young man acting as guide succeeded in so interesting him by his manner of describing all that the blind eyes could not see that at last Professor Fawcett asked him his position in the service, and further questioned him as to his pay and prospects. Presumably from what he gathered on that occasion he learnt much that set him thinking. A little while afterwards an official circular announced that the Postmaster-General would be willing to receive a statement of the men’s claims to better pay and prospects.