THE EXETER ROAD 95 



enters upon the most perilous part of its journey. Now 

 the snow falls as it should at Christmas time, when men 

 are seated round blazing fires in snug inn parlours, and 

 not braving the blasts in antediluvian flying machines. 

 The coachman foreseeing the worst, and that every 

 moment the snowfall is heavier, tries to churn his horses 

 into a canter as the gloom of a winter's afternoon begins 

 to fall upon Bagshot Heath. The guard now fingers his 

 blunderbuss delicately, and sees a highwayman behind 

 every bush ; but highwaymen are not such fools as to 

 be out in such weather, and the driver, who can see 

 nothing at all, drives into a rut a yard deep. 



"Now shriek'd the timid and stood still the brave — " 



among whom the captain may not be numbered. He 

 bellows indeed like a bull, and jumping out of the coach 

 seeks refuge in a snowdrift, leaving his head exposed 

 above it, to show how the land lies. The coachman sees, 

 and double thongs his wheelers, who drag the coach out 

 of the rut to the side of the captain, and upset it in a 

 gravel pit. The captor of the highwayman now tells 

 Belinda not to be alarmed, and seats her with her mother 

 by her side on the side of the overturned Fly, from which 

 point of vantage they scream in concert, and look upon 

 as dismal a scene as two upset women ever saw. A 

 moan is heard from the lawyer, bound on most important 

 law business to Salisbury, but now studying the laws of 

 nature, &c. &c, after the manner of the inhabitants of 

 the island of Formosa, with his feet out of the window 

 and his head under the seat ; the coachman and guard 

 are enjoying the experience of the Laplanders, who 

 never think so deeply as when they are lying on their 

 back in the snow ; and the captain all the while is being 

 rapidly converted into New Zealand mutton. 



Having collected his scattered companions one by 

 one, and propped them in various attitudes of frozen 

 dejection against the side of the overturned coach, the 



