THE HOLYHEAD ROAD 357 



service of the Mail, and succeeded after incredible exer- 

 tions in getting it out of the hollow in which it was 

 sunk. 



The Holyhead Road enters Buckinghamshire at 

 Brickhills, seven miles six furlongs further on, and 

 forty- five miles from London. 



But I must not leave these forty-five miles behind me 

 without noting a curious sight which was often to be 

 seen on this stretch from the tops of coaches before the 

 legislature forbade the use of dogs as animals of draught. 

 This sight was an old pauper, born without legs but with a 

 sporting turn of mind. This natural bias led him to 

 contrive a small waggon — very light, as may well be 

 imagined since it had nothing but a board for the body. 

 It was however fitted with springs, lamps and all 

 necessary appliances, and was drawn by a new kind of 

 team in the form of three fox-hounds harnessed abreast. 



In this flying machine of his own contriving, Old Lai, 

 for such was the name of the old pauper born without 

 legs — no name having been given him by his Godfathers 

 and Godmothers at his baptism — Old Lai used to make 

 the most terrific times. His team were well matched in 

 size and pace, cleverly harnessed, and he dashed coaches 

 making even their twelve miles an hour like the shot out 

 of a gun, and with a slight cheer of encouragement to 

 his team ; but not in any spirit of insolence or defiance, 

 as Captain M. E. Haworth (who in his Road Scrapings 

 has preserved this episode of the North-Western Road) 

 is careful to tell us, but merely to urge the hounds to 

 their pace. 



This pace in the end proved fatal to Old Lai, after 

 having lived for many years on the alms of passengers 

 by coaches between the Peacock at Islington and the 

 Sugar Loaf at Dunstable. For one winter, when ac- 

 cording to the ostler of the Sugar Loafs version, " the 

 weather was terrible rough, there was snow and hice, 

 and the storm blowed down a-many big trees, and them 

 as stood used to 'oiler and grunt up in the Pine Bottom 



