He reached the platform a few minutes after the train had arrived.  That entire incapability of devising administrative measures for the management of large crowds, which is one of the characteristics of Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than at York.  Three different lines of railway assemble three passenger mobs, from morning to night, under one roof; and leave them to raise a traveler’s riot, with all the assistance which the bewildered servants of the company can render to increase the confusion.  The customary disturbance was rising to its climax as Captain Wragge approached the platform.  Dozens of different people were trying to attain dozens of different objects, in dozens of different directions, all starting from the same common point and all equally deprived of the means of information.  A sudden parting of the crowd, near the second-class carriages, attracted the captain’s curiosity.  He pushed his way in; and found a decently-dressed man—­assisted by a porter and a policeman—­attempting to pick up some printed bills scattered from a paper parcel, which his frenzied fellow-passengers had knocked out of his hand.

Offering his assistance in this emergency, with the polite alacrity which marked his character, Captain Wragge observed the three startling words, “Fifty Pounds Reward,” printed in capital letters on the bills which he assisted in recovering; and instantly secreted one of them, to be more closely examined at the first convenient opportunity.  As he crumpled up the bill in the palm of his hand, his party-colored eyes fixed with hungry interest on the proprietor of the unlucky parcel.  When a man happens not to be possessed of fifty pence in his own pocket, if his heart is in the right place, it bounds; if his mouth is properly constituted, it waters, at the sight of another man who carries about with him a printed offer of fifty pounds sterling, addressed to his fellow-creatures.

The unfortunate traveler wrapped up his parcel as he best might, and made his way off the platform, after addressing an inquiry to the first official victim of the day’s passenger-traffic, who was sufficiently in possession of his senses to listen to it.  Leaving the station for the river-side, which was close at hand, the stranger entered the ferryboat at the North Street Postern.  The captain, who had carefully dogged his steps thus far, entered the boat also; and employed the short interval of transit to the opposite bank in a perusal of the handbill which he had kept for his own private enlightenment.  With his back carefully turned on the traveler, Captain Wragge now possessed his mind of the following lines: 

“FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.