“No, she can’t have it,” assented Tom; “then it must be somewhere about.” We searched again and again, turning over everything in the van, but without success. The Premier’s despatch-box was gone; and all we could do at first was to stand and stare at one another. Our trance of blank dismay was of short duration, for the van was assailed by the postmen from St. Martin’s-le-Grand, who were waiting for our charge. In a stupor of bewilderment we completed our work, and delivered up the mails; then, once more we confronted one another with pale faces, frightened out of our seven senses. All the scrapes we had ever been in (and we had had our usual share of errors and blunders) faded into utter insignificance compared with this. My eye fell upon Mr. Huntingdon’s order lying among some scraps of waste paper on the floor, and I picked it up, and put it carefully, with its official envelope, into my pocket. “We can’t stay here,” said Tom. The porters were looking in inquisitively; we were seldom so long in quitting our empty van. “No,” I replied, a sudden gleam of sense darting across the blank bewilderment of my brain; “no, we must go to head-quarters at once, and make a clean breast of it. This is no private business, Tom.” We made one more ineffectual search, and then we hailed a cab and drove as hard as we could to the General Post-office. The secretary of the Post-office was not there, of course, but we obtained the address of his residence in one of the suburbs, four or five miles from the City, and we told no one of our misfortune, my idea being that the fewer who were made acquainted with the loss the better. My judgment was in the right there.