The Coachmaster 



my brother at the time, neither was there 

 loss of Hfe to passenger or horse. A lady, 

 the single passenger at the time of its hap- 

 pening, suffered, it^was said, such a shock to 

 her nerves, that her friends thought it right 

 to demand ^500 damages. My Father, to 

 whom, for all his thriving business, such a sum 

 was a great consideration, resisted so large 

 a' claim by persuasion of my Mother and 

 others. The claim was immediately doubled, 

 and a lawsuit ensued in which he lost 

 his case. The payment of this sum was a 

 terrible pull on his purse, but the accident 

 itself, the first incident to cast a shadow on 

 his long coaching career, was by far the 

 heavier trouble to him, and it aged him 

 sadly. 



There was a witness called in for my 

 Father during that lawsuit whom I re- 

 member well. He was a brown brawny 

 fisherman, called Speedwell Jasper, and he 

 was only one of the many poor folk, who 

 loved and honoured the Coachmaster. 



''Will you swear to this?" asked the 

 lawyer, referring to some point in the case. 



"Swear to it ? I sh'd think I would ! 

 I'd swear to anything for old Master 

 Hyde," replied this devotedly unreliable 

 witness. 



I was at this time living in London, 



