DOWN THE ROAD IN DAYS OF YORE 8i 



way. Fear only leaves us when Ave are clear 

 of the town and once more on the unobstructed 

 road ; then only is there leisure for the mind to 

 dwell upon the beauties of that glorious old 

 stone-built town. We are thus ruminating when, 

 between Great Casterton and Stretton, where 

 we enter Rutlandshire, the glaring lamps of a 

 swiftly aj^i^roaching coach lurch forward out of 

 the long persj^ective of road, and, with a clatter 

 of harness and a sharp crunching of wheels, fall 

 away, as in a vision. The guard, answering some 

 one's question, says it is the Leeds " Rocking- 

 ham," due in London at something after ten in 

 the morning. 



Tlie determination to keeji aAvake was heroic, 

 but without avail. Even the screaming and 

 grumbling of the skid and the straining of the 

 Avheels down Spitalgate Hill into Grantham did 

 not suffice to quite waken us. But what that 

 noise and the jarring of the wheels failed to do, the 

 stoppage at the " George " at Grantham and the 

 sudden quiet do succeed in. Our friend the moon 

 has by now sunk to rest, and a pallid dawn has 

 come ; someone remarks that it is past three 

 o'clock in the morning, and someone else is 

 wakened and hauled forth from amid the snoring 

 insides, whose snores become gasps and gul^is, and 

 then resolve themselves into the yaAvns and peevish 

 exclamations of tired men. The person thus 

 awakened proves to be a passenger who had booked 

 to ColsterAvorth, Avhich is a little village we have 

 now left eight miles behind us. He had been 

 VOL. II. . 6 



