They still occupied the same room,--a fact which infinitely increased the torments of Curlydown's position. They ought to have been moved very far asunder. Curlydown was still engaged in the routine ordinary work of the day, seeing that the proper changes were made in all the stamps used during the various hours of the day,--assuring himself that the crosses and letters and figures upon which so much of the civilisation of Europe depended, were properly altered and arranged. And it may well be that his own labours were made heavier by the devotion of his colleagues to other matters. And yet from time to time Bagwax would ask him questions, never indeed taking his advice, but still demanding his assistance. Curlydown was not naturally a man of ill-temper or an angry heart. But there were moments in which he could hardly abstain from expressing himself with animosity. On a certain morning in August, Bagwax was seated at his table, which as usual was laden with the envelopes of many letters. There were some hundreds before him, the marks on which he was perusing with a strong magnifying-glass. It had been arranged that he was to start on his great journey in the first week in September, and he employed his time before he went in scanning all the envelopes bearing the Sydney postmark which he had been able to procure in England. He spent the entire day with a magnifying-glass in his hand;--but as Curlydown was also always armed in the same fashion, that was not peculiar. They did much of their work with such tools. The date on the envelope,--the date conveyed by the impression, to which so much attention had been given,--was 10th May 1873. Bagwax had succeeded in getting covers bearing dates very close to that. The 7th of May had been among his treasures for some time, and now he had acquired an entire letter, envelope and all, which bore the Sydney impression of the 13th May. This was a great triumph. 'I have brought it within a week,' he said to Curlydown, bending down over his glass, and inspecting at the same time the two dates. 'What's the good of that?' asked Curlydown, as he passed rapidly under his own glass the stamps which it was his duty to inspect from day to day. 'All the good in the world,' said Bagwax, brandishing his own magnifier with energy. 'It is almost conclusive.' Now the argument with Bagwax was this,--that if he found in the Sydney postmarks of 7th May, and in those of 13th May, the same deviations or bruises in the die, those deviations must have existed also on the days between these two dates;--and as the impression before him was quite perfect, without any deviation, did it not follow that it must have been obtained in some manner outside the ordinary course of business? 'There are a dozen stamps in use at the Sydney office,' said Curlydown.