We came, at last, a little before sunrise to the summit of a hill, and saw the high-road passing at right angles through an open country of meadows and hedgerow pollards; and not only the York mail, speeding smoothly at the gallop of the four horses, but a post-chaise besides, with the post-boy titupping briskly, and the traveller himself putting his head out of the window, but whether to breathe the dawn, or the better to observe the passage of the mail, I do not know.

So that we enjoyed for an instant a picture of free life on the road, in its most luxurious forms of despatch and comfort.

And thereafter, with a poignant feeling of contrast in our hearts, we must mount again into our wheeled dungeon.
We came to our stages at all sorts of odd hours, and they were in all kinds of odd places.

I may say at once that my first experience was my best.

Nowhere again were we so well entertained as at Burchell Fenn's.
And this, I suppose, was natural, and indeed inevitable, in so long and secret a journey.