Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of

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Westminster Hall; today, taking the life of an atrocious murderer,

and tomorrow 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 there

Greatnesses, and myriads of small creaturesthe creatures of this

chronicle among the restalong the roads that lay before them.

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Chapter II

THE MAIL

t 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 uphill

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 itlike 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.

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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 coachlamps

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