it rumbled along, taking up one passenger and putting down another, he probably felt that his identity was every minute becoming confounded and confused by the exchange of fellowpassengers for strangers that was constantly taking place. But all the time he was thinking, the Cad of the omnibus-a policeman in disguise-knew that he held his victim like a rat in a cage. Without, however, apparently taking the slightest notice of him, he took one sixpence, gave change for a shilling, handed out this lady, stuffed in that one, until, arriving at the Bank, the guilty man, stooping as he walked towards the carriage-door, descended the steps;-paid his fare;--crossed over to the Duke of Wellington's statue, where pausing for a few moments, anxiously to gaze around him, he proceeded to the Jerusalem Coffee House,-thence over London Bridge to the Leopard Coffee House in the Borough, and finally to a lodging-house in Scott's Yard, Cannon Street.

He probably fancied that, by making so many turns and doubles, he had not only effectually puzzled all pursuit, but that his appearance at so many coffee-houses would assist him, if necessary, in proving an alibi; but, whatever may have been his motives or his thoughts, he had scarcely entered the lodging when the policeman-who, like a wolf, had followed him every step of the way--opening his door, very calmly said to himthe words no doubt were infinitely more appalling to him even than the scream that had been haunting him—

"HAV'NT YOU JUST COME FROM SLOUGH?"

The monosyllable "NO," confusedly uttered in reply, substantiated his guilt.

The policeman made him his prisoner ;-he was thrown into jail ;-tried ;-found guilty of wilful murder ;-and--HANGED.

A few months afterwards, we happened to be travelling by rail from Paddington to Slough, in a carriage filled with people all strangers to one another. Like English travellers, they were all mute. For nearly fifteen miles no one had uttered a single word, until a short-bodied, short-necked, short-nosed, exceedingly respectable-looking man in the corner, fixing his eyes on

the apparently fleeting posts and wires of the electric telegraph, significantly nodded to us as he muttered aloud

"THEM'S THE CORDS THAT HUNG JOHN TAWELL!"

Having now concluded a rough outline of the practical working of the electric telegraph, it is necessary that we should stateas an important fact on which we offer no comment-that the Company has made arrangements with all the railway companies for working their wires, excepting with the South-Eastern, and, accordingly, that the electric communication between London and Dover is worked by itself, and without connexion with the general system.

The wires of the electric telegraph from the various lines of railway, carried under the streets, and concentrated at the central station in London, transmit private messages and answers to and from the following places:

CHAPTER XIV.

RAILWAY CLEARING-HOUSE.

It is a curious fact that human ignorance, and especially good honest homespun English ignorance, often produces important and highly beneficial results. "If I had but known what I have had to contend with I would never have undertaken the job,” is a remark which many a poor emigrant, many a weary traveller, many a journeyman labourer in every department of life, has fervently muttered to himself. The ejaculation is particularly applicable to the original projectors of our railways, who, had they but known the hydra-headed difficulties which, one after another, they would have to encounter, would most surely have kept their money in their pockets, or, in the phraseology of the vulgar, "would never have undertaken the job."

Besides the difficulty of raising money, which during the railway mania certainly amounted to nil, there were parliamentary difficulties, engineering difficulties, difficulties of management of various descriptions; and yet, when all these were overcome, when each railway, with its beautiful system of committee-men, secretaries, engineers, surveyors, station-masters, engine-drivers, stokers, pokers, guards, police, superintendents, artificers, labourers, &c., was fully organised and completed, and every line competent along the whole or any portion of its length to convey with safety and due attention every description of traffic, there suddenly appeared a new difficulty, which not only most seriously embarrassed, but which threatened almost to prevent, the combined action of the vertebral railways which at such trouble and cost had just been created. The difficulty alluded to was what is now commonly called "the through traffic."

Even before the railway system came into full operation, it was soon found, that to conciliate, or rather to satisfy the just claims of the passenger public, it would be necessary not to harass warm "through travellers by forcing them to migrate to cold carriages as often as, asleep or awake, dozing or dreaming, they reached each terminus of the various railway companies who, in enmity rather than in partnership, were the proprietors of the consecutive portions of the thoroughfare line.

Again, it was soon found that our merchants and manufacturers as justly insisted rather than requested that their goods and merchandise should go 66 through" to their destinations without being subjected to the delay and serious injury which were unavoidable in repeatedly unpacking and repacking them into fresh waggons. Lastly, it was found that, for cattle and horses, changes of carriages were equally objectionable. The will of the people becoming, therefore, in these instances, the law of the rails, passengers, parcels, goods, horses, and cattle, were, generally speaking, carried "through" without change of carriage.

But though the traveller, the receiver of the parcel, of the package, of the horse, dog, bullock, sheep, or pig, after paying for the fare, of course cared not the hundred-thousandth part of a farthing what was done with the money, yet it will be self-evident that he left behind him sources of endless vexation and almost unpreventible disputes; for not only was the paltry fare he had paid for his own conveyance, or that which he might have paid for the conveyance of a lean pig, to be divided among the proprietors of two, three, four, five, six, or seven different companies, but of these companies all excepting one would have not only to remunerate by a mileage allowance the company in whose carriage or waggon, for the benefit of all parties, the traveller, or his parcel, or his goods, or his cow, calf, horse, dog, sheep, or sow, had been carried "through," but an extra charge for demurrage was evidently due to the said company for every day that its carriage or waggon had been detained by the companies to whom it did not belong. The railway companies between London and York first saw the absolute necessity of their endeavouring by some arrangement to settle accounts of this description, which