Travelling in the old coaching days was not all hardship. It had its own, its peculiar pleasures. A writer of that time dwells with eloquence on the rapture with which he viewed a fine sunrise from the outside of a fast coach on the Great North Road; on the appetite with which he fell to upon a five o'clock breakfast at Doncaster, on the delight with which he heard the nightingales sing on a fine night as he swept through Henley, on the satisfaction of seeing old Shoreditch Church, which betokened the end of the journey. Men did not then hurry at headlong speed along iron rails, with their heads buried in a newspaper or in the latest novel. They learned to know and had time to view the objects of interest that fringed the highway--to recognize the farm at which the Great Durham Ox was bred, and the house in which the equally great Sir Isaac Newton was born. If these things were strange to the travellers and their appearance promised a good fee, the coachman condescended from his greatness and affably pointed them out.

But to sit through the long winter night, changing each hour from one damp and musty post-chaise to another, to stamp and fume and fret while horses were put to at every stage, to scold an endless succession of incoming and fee an endless series of out-going postboys, each more sleepy and sullen than the last--this was another matter. To be delayed here and checked there and overcharged everywhere, to be fobbed off with the worst teams--always reserved for night travellers--and to find, once started on the long fourteen-mile stage, that the off-wheeler was dead lame, to fall asleep and to be aroused with every hour--these were the miseries, and costly miseries they were, of old-world journeying. This was its seamy side. And many a time Clement, stamping his stone-cold feet in wind-swept inn yards, or ringing ostlers' bells in stone-paved passages, repented that he had started, repented that he had ever undertaken the task.

Why had he, he asked himself more than once that bitter night. What was Arthur Bourdillon to him that he should spend himself in an effort as toilsome as it promised to be vain, to hold him back from the completion of his roguery? Would Arthur ever thank him? Far from it. And Josina? Josina, brave, loving Josina, who had risen to heights of which he thrilled to think, she might indeed thank him--and that should be enough for him. But what could she do to requite him, apart from her father? And the Squire at Garth had stated his position, nor even if he relented was he one to pour himself out in gratitude--he who hated the name of Ovington, and laid all this at their door. It would be much if he ever noticed him with more than a grunt, or ever gave one thought to his exertions or their motive.

No, he had let a quixotic, a foolish impulse run away with him! He should have waited until Arthur had brought down the money, and then he should have returned it. That had been the simple, the matter-of-fact course, and all that it had been incumbent on him to do. As it was, for what was he spending himself and undergoing these hardships? To hasten the ruin of the bank, to meet failure half-way, to render his father penniless a few hours earlier, rather than later. To mask a rascality that need never be disclosed, since no one would hear of it unless the Squire talked. Yes, he had been a fool to hurl himself thus through the night, chilled to the bone, with fevered head and ice-cold feet, when he might have been a hundred times better employed in supporting his father in his need, in putting a brave front on things, and smiling in the face of suspicion.

To be sure, it was only as the night advanced, or rather in the small hours of the morning, when his ardor had died down and Josina's pleading face was no longer before him, and the spirit of adventure was low in him, that he entertained these thoughts. For a time all went well. He found his relay waiting for him at the Heygate Inn by Wellington, where the name of the Lion was all-powerful; and after covering at top speed the short stage that followed, he drove, still full of warmth and courage, into Wolverhampton at a quarter before eleven. Over thirty miles in three hours! He met with a little delay there; the horses had to be fetched from another stable, in another street. But he got away in the end, and ten minutes later he was driving over a land most desolate by day, but by night lurid with the flares of a hundred furnace-fires. He rattled up to the Castle at Birmingham at half an hour after midnight, found the house still lighted and lively, and by dint of scolding and bribing was presently on the road again with a fresh team, and making for Coventry, with every inclination to think that the difficulties of posting by night had been much exaggerated.

But here his good luck left him. At the half-way stage he met with disaster. He had passed the up coach half an hour before, and no orders now anticipated him. When he reached the Stone Bridge there were no horses; on the contrary, there were three travellers waiting there, clamorous to get on to Birmingham. Unwarily he jumped out of his chaise, and "No horses?" he cried. "Impossible! There must be horses!"

But the ostler gave him no more than a stolid stare. "Nary a nag!" he replied coolly. "Nor like to be, master, wi' every Quaker in Birmingham gadding up and down as if his life 'ung on it! Why, if I've----"

"Quakers? What the devil do you mean?" Clement cried, thinking that the man was reflecting on him.

"Well, Quakers or drab-coated gentry like yourself!" the man replied, unmoved. "And every one wi' pistols and a money bag! Seems that's what they're looking for--money, so I hear. Such a driving and foraging up and down the land these days, it's a wonder the horses' hoofs bean't worn off."

"Then," said Clement, turning about, "I'll take these on to Meriden."

But the waiting travellers had already climbed into the chaise and were in possession, and the postboy had turned his horses. And, "No, no, you'll not do that," said the ostler. "Custom of the road, master! Custom of the road! You must change and wait your turn."

"But there must be something on," Clement cried in despair, seeing himself detained here, perhaps for the whole night.

"Naught! Nary a 'oof in the yard, nor a lad!" the man replied. "You'd best take a bed."

"But when will there be horses?"

"Maybe something'll come in by daylight--like enough."

"By daylight? Oh, confound you!" cried Clement, enraged. "Then I'll walk on to Meriden."

"Walk? Walk on to----" the ostler couldn't voice his astonishment. "Walk?"

"Ay, walk, and be hanged to you!" Clement cried, and without another word plunged into the darkness of the long, straight road, his bag in his hand. The road ran plain and wide before him, he couldn't miss it; the distance, according to Paterson, which he had in his handbag, was no more than two miles, and he thought that he could do it in half an hour.

But, once away, under the trees, under the midnight sky, in the silence and darkness of the country-side, the fever of his spirits made the distance seem intolerable. As he tramped along the lonely road, doubtful of the wisdom of his action, the feeling of strangeness and homelessness, the sense of the uselessness of what he was doing, grew upon him. At this rate he might as well walk to London! What if there were no horses at Meriden? Or if he were stayed farther up the road? He counted the stages between him and London, and he had time and enough to despair of reaching it, before he at last, at a good four miles an hour, strode out of the night into the semicircle of light which fell upon the road before the Bull's Head at Meriden. Thank heaven, there were lights in the house and people awake, and some hope still! And more than hope, for almost before he had crossed the threshold a sleepy boots came out of the bar and met him, and "Horses? Which way, sir? Up? I'll ring the ostler's bell, sir!"

Clement could have blessed him. "Double money to Coventry if I leave the door in ten minutes!" he cried, taking out his watch. And ten minutes later--or in so little over that time as didn't count--he was climbing into a chaise and driving away: so well organized after all--and all defects granted--was the posting system that at that time covered England. To be sure, he was on one of the great roads, and the Bull's Head at Meriden was a house of fame.

He had availed himself of the interval to swallow a snack and a glass of brandy and water, and he was the warmer for the exercise and in better spirits; pluming himself a little, too, on the resolution which had plucked him from his difficulty at the Stone Bridge. But he had lost the greater part of an hour, and the clocks at Coventry were close on three when he rattled through the narrow, twisting streets of that city. Here, early as was the hour, he caught rumors of the panic, and hints were dropped by the night-men in the inn yard--in sly reply, perhaps, to his adjurations to hasten--of desperate men hurrying to and fro, and buying with gold the speed which meant fortune and life to them. Something was said of a banker who had shot himself at Northampton--or was it Notting............