The six sorters, innocent or guilty of the charge against them, were still suspended, but the resentment of the authorities did not stop here. One of the official doorkeepers was pounced on to account for his not successfully resisting the several hundred determined men who so forcibly objected to be made prisoners of. The doorkeeper was rather a small man, and built more on the lines of a jockey than of a gladiator. But it was useless to urge such a fact on the official mind bent on inflicting condign punishment. So the poor little man was pronounced guilty of failing to perform a feat which would have baffled Hercules. He was in consequence reduced to an inferior position entailing greater responsibility; and failing to become competent in a duty which was entirely new to him, he was incontinently bundled out of the service on a starvation pension of six shillings a week. He did not long survive his defeat, but died a little while afterwards of a sheer broken heart. That the so-called riot at the General Post-Office was only one of the straws which showed the way of the wind may be taken for granted. Whether it could have occurred in a better-regulated service is perhaps doubtful. The scheme which with its small benefits had given so much satisfaction to the letter-carriers as to induce them, if not to remain satisfied, to abandon agitation for the present, had caused corresponding dissatisfaction to the letter-sorters. The only benefit derived from the Manners scheme, if it could be called such, was the increase of sixpence a year in the increment. The keenest disappointment prevailed, and a movement was already afoot to find expression for that disappointment in a memorial to the author, Lord John Manners. Yet, though the feelings of the men were scarcely concealed, it had been officially represented to the Postmaster-General and the Controller that the demands of the sorting force were now fully satisfied, and that the men themselves acknowledged it. This official misrepresentation was followed by an anonymous note being pinned on the notice-board in the retiring-room. It was to the effect: “Who thus misrepresents the spirit of the Inland Branch? As mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.” The note was detached and taken to the superintendent; and one of the men, Glamorgan, who had already distinguished himself in the line of a satirical verse-maker, was suspended for some days on suspicion of being its author.