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the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall;
to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a
wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in
and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred
and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the
Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those
other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough,
and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the
year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their
Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--the creatures of this
chronicle among the rest--along the roads that lay before them.



II

The Mail


It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,
before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.
The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered
up Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the
mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the
least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but
because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were
all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop,
besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous
intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman
and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war
which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument,
that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had
capitulated and returned to their duty.

With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way
through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles,
as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often
as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a
wary "Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" the near leader violently shook his
head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic horse,
denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the
leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous
passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed
in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest
and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its
slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and
overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might
do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of
the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of
road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if
they had made it all.

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill
by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones

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