have been quietly drawn. To those in the thick of the swaying, sweltering crowd of angry and excited men the heat was getting unbearable. Some one, or several at once, suggested rushing the doors; but to deliberately break down the barrier seemed to spell mutiny of the worst kind, and numbers of the front ranks held back at the prospect of afterwards being named as ringleaders. The responsible officials retired to a distance and watched with the grim satisfaction of schoolmasters who were “keeping in” a refractory class of school-children. The realisation that they were being kept prisoners at the behest of one or two of their superiors was intensifying the impatience and the excitement of the sweltering crowd behind, and impatience soon grew to desperation. The air was repeatedly filled with groans and hisses, and the storm of groans was presently turned by some one facetiously striking up a bar of “Britons never, never shall be slaves!” That was enough, for the men behind especially. They remembered they were Britons. A square of infantry with fixed bayonets could not have stopped them now. They were solidly packed several hundreds strong in one long stream, fed every moment by reinforcements as they gained courage to leave the sorting-tables. Fortunately some one by an adroit manœuvre had turned a line of heavy mail-trucks and trolleys, placed there either carelessly or purposely, or the result might have been disastrous to those in front. Menaces and shouts were directed towards the men who barred their way; but neither threats nor appeals would move them, and it seemed they would be flattened against the door they were so zealously guarding, for those in front could no longer hold against the mighty pressure of the hundreds behind. The crowd heaved and rocked like a huge billow. There were shouts and groans and some were real, a tremendous scuffle, a sound like the cracking of ribs, a crash of woodwork, a shattering of glass accompanied with a louder yell; the doors burst from their fastenings, and the hot perspiring stream of angry men vomited itself into the open air and the daylight. Then the wild mob’s several hundred feet scattered down the steps into the Post-Office yard, and the men who had broken their red-tape bonds to assert the liberty of the person again burst into such a roar of triumph that a jaded horse on the cab-rank outside in Aldersgate Street took fright and bolted. The untoward commotion stopped the stream of traffic in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and crowds assembled outside the Post-Office railings while the police hurried to the scene from every by-turning. The general traffic was disordered for half-an-hour, till the last remnant of the imprisoned men issued from the gates.