The Coachmaster 



incident which shows, as I think^ how 

 good a servant the Rudds lost when my 

 Father left their employ. One morning, 

 several hours before the down coach 

 should start, my Father, on going to report 

 himself at the office in Fetter Lane, was 

 informed curtly that the coach would not 

 run that day. Neither then nor after 

 could he win any explanation ; he would 

 sometimes say he suspected Mr. Watty, 

 old Rudd's partner and his informant, had 

 been drinkino-, or had had some serious 

 quarrel with his partner in Brighton ; but 

 indeed he never properly understood the 

 strange incident. He was told that if he 

 touched the coach or horses that day, he 

 would do so at the risk of instant dismissal. 

 My Father was not one to be stayed if he 

 knew a thing must be done. He went 

 straightway to his friend, the proprietor of 

 the ''Old Bell" in Holborn, himself a 

 coach-owner formerly, who in this dire 

 extremity lent him an old coach which had 

 stood unused for several years. Then 

 together they managed to borrow four 

 horses, a motley crew indeed : two lean 

 bays from a job-master, a third with the 

 proportions of a young cart-horse from 

 a friendly butcher, the fourth being a 

 jog-trot mare of venerable age, the pro- 

 38 



