76 ox THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



ledge of the three E's, could reckon on receiving 

 a guinea a day and expenses for his valuable services 

 in connection with projected lines, whether as traffic 

 inquiry agent, or even amateur engineer ; the trained 

 land surveyor could command his own price, and the 

 untrained youth could soon pick up a smattering (as I 

 did) of field-work, which enabled him to run a base 

 line, take angles — even levels — keep a field-book, and 

 plot a section, with the best. 



An elder brother (who had properly graduated in 

 the profession, and whom I accompanied to Suffolk) 

 had, some months earlier, planned, as the result of a 

 few w^eeks' work, a line from Barnet to Tottenham, a 

 distance of six or eight miles. He took his map to 

 the Eastern Counties Eailway Company, who gave 

 him five hundred pounds for it — so easily was money 

 made at that period — and then put it in a pigeon- 

 hole, where, unless Sir Cusack Eoney afterwards tore 

 it up, it is, perhaps, still. 



My ghostly visitor at the ancient inn we stayed 

 at in Ipswich came through the wall, arrayed in 

 purest white, quite in the orthodox way, at four 

 o'clock on a summer's morning, wavered about the 

 end of the bedroom for some moments, and then, 

 gliding across it after the manner of ghosts, again 

 passed easily through the wall. A few years ago 

 I slept a second time in the same inn, and, as I 

 fancy, in precisely the same room. If so, the mystery 

 cleared itself up in the most matter-of-fact way. 



In the wall opposite the foot of my bed was a fire- 



