320 THE COACHING AGE. 



at a gallop, with its four lamps and a bull's-eye 

 blazing away. If there did not happen to be a stone 

 dep6t at hand when the mail was heard coming, 

 they squeezed as close as possible into the hedge, 

 and waited there till it had passed. 



The coachman who drove on the other side with 

 Mills was a tall and powerful man, known by the 

 name of Jack White. He was not a member of the 

 Blue Eibbon Army, as I discovered in travelling on 

 the mail with him one night. 



Just before entering the town of Monmouth, and 

 where the road is rather on the descent, a tram- 

 way, used only for coal waggons drawn by horses, 

 crosses the road, and has, therefore, to be • crossed 

 by the mail ; it happened in doing so, either from 

 the jerk the mail received in crossing the tram- 

 way quickly, or from some other cause to which I 

 need not further allude, Mr. White was pitched off 

 the box, but most miraculously without sustaining 

 any serious injury, or the horses bolting with the 

 coach, which arrived safely at the Beaufort Arms in 

 the market-place, where they had to turn round 

 before changing, in order to get into the road leading 

 to Hereford, the next town the mail passed through 

 after leaving Monmouth. 



Mail-coachmen and mail-guards did not always 

 work quite harmoniously together, and when any, 



