1829.) ! the Cambridge Coachman. 19 
where, for miles together, there was not such a thing as a turnpike-road 
to be seen, or scarce a road of any sort, that, to trot upon it for an hour, 
would not break the heart of any beast but a Welsh pony. Well, one 
day, Frank, who had been paddling it on the hoof ever since sunrise, 
up hill and down hill, found the night closing in upon him, and no 
house near. It was bitter cold, too, being the fag-end of autumn, and, 
to mend matters, there was every chance of a heavy storm. As he looked 
up, the clouds came sweeping along from the north-east, and the stars 
seemed to go out before them, one after another, like the dying sparks 
from a sky-rocket, till at last one only remained in a space of blue no 
larger than you might cover with your hat. Even that did not escape 
long ; the clouds still drove on, surging over the little twinkling light, 
first in thin vapour, then thicker—thicker—thicker—like the rising tide 
. on a rock, till it has overwhelmed it; and all this time the wind was not 
idle: it whistled over the naked heath on the sides of the hill, and 
« rushed and roared amongst the trees in the low ground he had just left, 
that you would have thought it was the sea beating on a shingly beach. 
Frank, indeed, was somewhat of that way of thinking, though he did not 
well know how it could be ; and he almost expected, on reaching the brow 
of the hill, to find the water before him. He kept on, however ; for, be it 
as it might, he could hardly be worse off than he was, sea or no sea on 
the other side of the mountain. But, as luck would have it, things 
___ turned out better than he had expected ;—on coming to the top of the 
ascent, he found a wild, gravelly common, stretching away on all sides 
- into the darkness, and saw several lights twinkling dimly at a distance, 
though it was too far off for him to tell whether they belonged to one 
house or many. Not that this was of any consequence, so that there was 
some place where he could get shelter ; for he had no fancy, as you may 
suppose, to pass the night out on this bleak waste, under the pouring 
rain, or it might be a storm of sleet and hail, after having trudged it till 
he was scarcely able to keep on his feet any longer. So, on he walked, 
as quickly as a weary man could do, and with a merry heart, though his 
road was none of the best or safest ; this moment he was up to his chin 
among the furze, that scratched and tore him worse than the worst shrew 
_ of a hundred; and the next he was wading knee-deep in a quagmire, 
from which it was a miracle he ever got out again; and when he did, 
and behold! the lights had all vanished.—‘ There is witchcraft in 
this,’ thought Frank to himself; ‘ or is it possible that, in struggling out 
of that confounded swamp, I have changed my path, and got something 
_ between me and the building ?—I'll on, however.’ And he did go on 
—for Frank, as I said before, was a stout-hearted fellow—and, to his 
eat joy, suddenly came again upon the lights, which, it might be, had 
been hidden from him by a small enclosure of firs, growing to the right— 
the only things, above a furze-bush, that could possibly thrive in such a 
heap of sand and gravel. It was now plain that he had a large build- 
ing before him, and, as he drew yet nearer, it clearly shewed itself to be 
‘an inn ; for the meon, which just then peeped out from amass of broken 
_ @louds, shone full upon the sign—a rampant red lion, which swung to 
and fro with no little noise in the night-wind. This was a pleasant sight 
enough to a weary man, on a bleak heath, with a fierce storm brewing 
up: the sounds, too, that cante from within, of laughing and talking, 
and ¢lattering of pewter pots and glasses, were no less agreeable to the 
ear than the Red Lion was to the eye. So, using no ceremony where no 
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