I wrote:

> Now, you're all upsetting me guys. I'm a bit at a loss figuring out
> what could cause the problem, but I'll try to investigate.

  FWIW, here's the result of profiling a catchup on a group with 3800
messages. I'd be curious to see yours. XEmacs spends almost half the
time in GC (that, I could see) and an important time in SORT as well.

I'm especially interested to see if you SORT as much as I do here.