SNOW 51 



pafhway of old sleepers, but in any case there was 

 neither difficulty nor danger in getting down and 

 across the line to shelter, dry-shod. One passenger, 

 however, a man in the prime of middle life, was 

 paralyzed with terror. He could get as far as the 

 tender, but no further. At last the guard and fire- 

 man made him shut his eyes while they carefully 

 lifted him down and carried him to a house hard by. 



Again, a friend of mine told me that he and two 

 other gentlemen, having procured leave to do so, once 

 paid a visit of inspection to the Menai Tubular Bridge, 

 all three walking on the broad top of one of the tubes. 

 "When midw^ay between Carnarvonshire and Anglesea, 

 the self-possession of one of the three friends failed. 

 He dared go neither forward nor backward. In the 

 upshot he had to lie dow^n on his back, and each 

 companion taking a leg, they actually drew him in 

 that position back to the starting-point. 



The Waggon and Horses at Beckhampton has been, 

 I am told, in the hands of the same family for several 

 generations, and has enjoyed, as a roadside inn should, 

 a great reputation for excellent home-brewed beer. 

 Wayfarers had need, in the thirties, to be strengthened 

 by a generous stimulant, in facing the breezes of the 

 wide-spreading downs, and well armed, in preparing 

 for the possible attentions of highwaymen. For not 

 only was there, early in the century, a gibbet west 

 of Beckhampton — memorial of a mail-coach or other 

 highway robbery — but two and a half miles on the 



