WESTWARD HO ! 279 



mail-coach had given way; thereupon Guard White 

 had mounted one of tlie leaders, slinging the bags 

 across the crupper behind him. The horse liked 

 neither rider nor bags, flung them both off — the 

 former against a bridge, the latter into the road — and 

 cantered on gaily to his accustomed manger. The 

 injured guard picked himself up, collected his bags, 

 hired a donkey-cart in the Queen's name, and drove 

 up to Wexford post-office more bruised than over- 

 due. 



Does any traveller on the down mail-coach on 

 a certain September night of the very early sixties 

 yet recall the momentous drive between Ashford and 

 Eathdrum ? How, soon after leaving Newtown Mount 

 Kennedy, the wind rose ; how, when Ashford clock 

 had not long struck ten, it became the great equi- 

 noctial gale which blew down tree after tree across 

 the mail-road, and blocked it to all traffic ; and how 

 the coach had to turn back and evade the eight-mile 

 length, which the tempest had closed, by a long flank 

 march ? 



The coach for W^exford took me up one day at 

 Enniscorthy. I did not then know that there was a 

 story, if only a simple one, to be told of Miss Gill, 

 sometime postmistress. Like the Eoman sentinel at 

 the Misenum Gate of Pompeii, she had her duty to 

 do, and did it, though dying in the act. Soon after 

 half-i^ast four o'clock on a dark morning in 1861, 

 Guard AV. V. White (now of Southampton), on the 

 down night mail-coach from Dublin for Wexford, blew 



