about midnight
The doctor stood aside without another word , when he heard the dying man speak thus , and the old servant drew near , and , stooping over softly , held the looking-glass before his master . Presently afterwards , we , who stood around looking breathlessly at him , saw such a rapture upon his face , as left no doubt upon our minds that the face which had haunted him so long , had , in his last hour , disappeared . Many years ago , and before this Line was so much as projected , I was engaged as a clerk in a Travelling Post-office running along the Line of railway from London to a town in the Midland Counties , which we will call Fazeley . My duties were to accompany the mail-train which left Fazeley at 8.15 P.M. , and arrived in London about midnight , and to return by the day mail leaving London at 10.30 the following morning , after which I had an unbroken night at Fazeley , while another clerk discharged the same round of work ; and in this way each alternative evening I was on duty in the railway post-office van . At first I suffered a little from a hurry and tremor of nerve in pursuing my occupation while the train was crashing along under bridges and through tunnels at a speed which was then thought marvellous and perilous ; but it was not long before my hands and eyes became accustomed to the motion of the carriage , and I could go through my business with the same despatch and ease as in the post-office of the country town where I had learned it , and from which I had been promoted by the influence of the surveyor of the district , Mr. Huntingdon . In fact , the work soon fell into a monotonous routine , which , night after night , was pursued in an unbroken course by myself and the junior clerk , who was my only assistant : the railway post-office work not having then attained the importance and magnitude it now possesses . Our route lay through an agricultural district containing many small towns , which made up two or three bags only ; one for London ; another perhaps for the county town ; a third for the railway post-office , to be opened by us , and the enclosures to be distributed according to their various addresses .