[Illustration: BENJAMIN WORTHY HORNE.] He was a tall, lathy, irritable man, of eager face, quick, nervous speech, and rapid walk, with something of a military air in his alert, upright figure. The very antithesis of Chaplin, who was of short stature and possessed of a nature that nothing could ruffle, Horne must always expend his energies on the minor details of his extensive business, and himself do work that would have been better delegated to subordinates. In the end this wore him out, and brought him to a comparatively early death. Up early, no day was long enough for him, and he economised time by taking no regular meal until evening. He was generally to be seen eating his lunch out of a paper bag as he swung furiously along the streets. “There’s Horne,” said one of those many who did not love him, “with the devil at his elbow, as usual!” It was, perhaps, well for him that Chaplin, calm and level-headed, came and entered into discussion on the railway question at that critical time when the fortunes of coach-proprietors were to be saved or lost by a simple declaration of policy. The time was 1837, the occasion the approaching opening of the first section of the London and Birmingham Railway. Should they hold out against the new order of things, as Sherman was bent upon doing, or should they enter into that alliance with the railway for which the railway people themselves were diplomatically angling? Chaplin thought they should, and proposed an amalgamation of their two interests. Horne was not so sure of railway success, and might have continued on his own way, but Chaplin, who was an old friend, urged his own views. “We shall lose £10,000 apiece if we don’t work with them,” he said, “and you won’t like that, Benny, my boy.” Eventually Horne agreed, and the firm of Chaplin & Horne was founded. Dark rumours were current at the time that to this newly constituted firm a sum of several thousands of pounds was paid by the London and Birmingham directors as the price of their friendship; but, however that may be, the allied coach-proprietors agreed to withdraw their coaches from the Birmingham Road, and to throw the weight of their interest and influence on the side of the railway. In return, they were given the contract for the parcel agency of the line. Chaplin had perceived, as Baxendale had already done in the case of the goods traffic, that this agency would be very valuable, and to his far-seeing counsel Horne owed much.