Country squires knew this very well, and threatened and fumed without ceasing, but they or their keepers never by any chance saw those roadside scenes familiar enough to passengers on the up-mails; when, passing at midnight by some dense woodland bordering the road, a low whistle would be heard, and the coach would pull up while a couple of men handed a sack over to the guard, who, thrusting it into the hind-boot and stamping the lid down, called out “Good-night!” and the journey was resumed without comment. The curious or suspicious might connect such an incident with another which often happened on entering London. “Jack,” the guard would sing out, “Mr. Smith wants his luggage left at so-and-so,” and the coach would be brought to a momentary halt outside some public-house, and the sack, from whose neck the inquisitive might perhaps have seen something remarkably like pheasants’ tails projecting, handed to an expectant porter. Any interested person following that porter would observe that the sack was delivered at the nearest poulterer’s. A guard pocketed half a crown each for all bankers’ parcels he was entrusted with; he was purveyor of tea and fish and buyer of meat to a hundred villages down the road; netted many a guinea from the lawyers in those days before ever the Judicature Act was thought of, when every answer filed in Chancery must needs be filed by special and sworn messenger; had a penny each for all letters picked up on the way, when post-offices were few and far between; was entrusted with great sums of money for payment into the London banks; and purchased wedding-rings for half the love-sick swains in a county. Every one knew him, trusted him, and fed him, and if he was a prudent man he had no difficulty in making money at express speed. One guard, it is recorded, was so earnest a fishmonger that he used the Post Office bags to carry his fish in, greatly to the disgust of the clerks, who found themselves smothered in scales and surrounded by a decidedly ancient, as well as fishlike, smell. They complained to the Postmaster-General, who reprimanded the delinquent, and with a quite unintentional pun observed that the “sole” reasons of his not being dismissed were his good character and long service.