The mode of paying wages, or at least of conveying the wages from head-quarters, is this. In order to guard against robbery or fraud, a list of all the porters, engine-drivers, guards, and other servants who belong to or are allotted to each station for payment, is sent up to head-quarters. On a given day--say Friday or Saturday--this list is taken back to the station by a clerk from the cashier or secretary's office, who also takes with him the sum required to pay all these servants their wages. The clerk makes a journey from one end of the line to the other, depositing, as he goes along, a parcel of money packed up with the wages-list. These parcels are received from the hands of the clerk by some one who is always on the lookout at each place of deposit, with that eagerness or care men usually betray when they expect to obtain the reward of their industry. The arrival of the cash-bearer is always either known by fixed arrangement or by a special telegram which is sent down the line. The reader is, I dare say, also quite unaware of the fact that, until a year or two ago, there existed a gang of the vilest scoundrels, who derived enormous gains by the systematic plunder of railway companies. Their modes of operation were as various as the devices of wicked ingenuity could possibly make them, and their ramifications were astonishing to the most practised detectives. Their subterfuges, plans, and arrangements furnished me with many a long and lucrative job; and very many cases, it is fair to suppose, went undiscovered, or even unsuspected. They brought actions for injuries never received, by persons who were never present at collisions or smashes; they made demands for lost parcels which, as an Irishman might be excused for saying, had never been lost; they stole passengers' luggage; they appropriated goods in course of transit; and they had other schemes of plunder. So widely ramified was their machinery, that in nearly every large station there would be a confederate ostensibly doing the company's work, receiving the company's pay, and ranked among the company's faithful servants. On every ninth or tenth train there was a guard who had a connexion, either as principal or agent, with the plunderers. At the head-quarters of many lines of railway throughout the kingdom--in the secretary's, chief cashier's, and manager's offices of several lines--they had their spies, informers, and associates.