334 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



at all events that on a night of October there was present 

 a gentleman of Yorkshire whose name (Robert Aske) a 

 few weeks later was ringing through every English house- 

 hold in accents of terror or admiration. 



But indeed standing before such a monument of days 

 gone by as this is, it is not a question of this or that 

 romantic episode rising to a fanciful man's mind as the 

 pageant of a whole nation's history passing in a sort of 

 ghostly procession. And what episode of that pageant, 

 or of such part of it at all events as passed on the Great 

 North Road, has not this great deserted house of enter- 

 tainment seen, fed, sheltered within its now crumbling 

 walls ? Gallants of Elizabeth's day, Cavaliers of Charles 

 the First's, Ironsides on their way to Marston Moor, 

 Restoration Courtiers flying from the Plague. And in 

 days more modern, King's messengers spurring to London 

 with the tidings of Culloden — and Cumberland himself 

 fresh from his red victory, and the long line of Jacobite 

 prisoners passing in melancholy procession, their arms 

 pinioned behind them, each prisoner's horse led by a 

 foot soldier carrying a musket with fixed bayonet ; each 

 division preceded by a troop of horse with drawn swords, 

 the drums insulting the unhappy prisoners by beating a 

 triumphal march in derision. 



Why, scenes beyond number such as these must have 

 passed before the long gabled front of this old Bell at 

 Stilton ; passed, faded, been succeeded by hundreds more 

 stirring, which in their turn too vanished like some half- 

 remembered dream. And the old house still seems to 

 keep some mysterious memory of these scenes locked in 

 its old withered heart ; as gaunt, ghost-like, deserted, 

 but half alive, it stares night and deiy on the lonely North 

 Road. 



