to be dead."

[1] In those days, it was not thought incumbent upon ministers of the Gospel to look after gipsy-folk, whose souls, in case they had any, were not opined to be much worth saying.

[1]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PROCESSION.

At the time of which I write, a dweller in the midlands who wanted to go to town, did not drive down to the nearest railway station, to be transported from thence by the fiery dragon to his destination. Railways had been long heard of, and indeed there was one within twenty miles of Fairburn, which we should now call a tramway only, for engine it had none. Locomotives were the subject of debate in scientific circles, and of scorn among the rest of the community. A journey such as that my tutor and myself were about to undertake, is scarcely to be understood by readers of the present generation. Not only did it consume an amount of time which would now suffice for six times the distance, but it was surrounded by difficulties and dangers that have now no existence whatever—"extinct Satans," as a writer calls them, who is now scarcely held to be "modern," but who at that time had never written a line. The coach for which Mr. Long had thought it advisable not to wait, had met in its time with a thousand-and-one strange casualties, and the guard was a very Scheherazade at relating them. The "Highflyer" had come to dreadful grief in racing with an empty stomach, but many "outsides," against its rival, the "Rapid," which traversed a portion of the same road. It had often to open both its doors, to let the water through, in crossing Crittenden Ford, by neglect of which precaution upon one occasion, four "insides" had the misfortune to be suffocated. It had been dug out of snow-drifts a hundred times, and now and then it had not been dug out, and the passengers had been frost-bitten. In winter it was usual enough for them to spend a day or two perforce at some country inn, because the roads were "not open." The "Highflyer" had once been attacked by a tiger (out of a travelling caravan), which killed the off-leader; but this was an exceptional adventure. It was attacked by highwaymen at least once a year, but in this respect was considered rather a fortunate coach. Only a few weeks previously, there had been found by the reapers, in one of Farmer Arabel's wheat-fields, 

 Prev. P 41/92 next