portmanteau, and one of the mail bags.

"Stop, you rascal! Sto-op!" they heard him shout from the forest. "You
damned blackguard!" he shouted, running up to the cart, and there was a
note of pain and fury in his tearful voice. "You anathema, plague take
you!" he roared, dashing up to the driver and shaking his fist at him.

"What a to-do! Lord have mercy on us!" muttered the driver in a
conscience-stricken voice, setting right something in the harness at the
horses' heads. "It's all that devil of a tracehorse. Cursed filly; it
is only a week since she has run in harness. She goes all right, but as
soon as we go down hill there is trouble! She wants a touch or two on
the nose, then she wouldn't play about like this... Stea-eady! Damn!"

While the driver was setting the horses to rights and looking for the
portmanteau, the mail bag, and the sword on the road, the postman in a
plaintive voice shrill with anger ejaculated oaths. After replacing the
luggage the driver for no reason whatever led the horses for a hundred
paces, grumbled at the restless tracehorse, and jumped up on the box.

When his fright was over the student felt amused and good-humoured. It
was the first time in his life that he had driven by night in a mail
cart, and the shaking he had just been through, the postman's having
been thrown out, and the pain in his own back struck him as interesting
adventures. He lighted a cigarette and said with a laugh:

"Why you know, you might break your neck like that! I very nearly flew
out, and I didn't even notice you had been thrown out. I can fancy what
it is like driving in autumn!"

The postman did not speak.

"Have you been going with the post for long?" the student asked.

"Eleven years."

"Oho; every day?"

"Yes, every day. I take this post and drive back again at once. Why?"

Making the journey every day, he must have had a good many interesting
adventures in eleven years. On bright summer and gloomy autumn nights,
or in winter when a ferocious snowstorm whirled howling round the mail
cart, it must have been hard to avoid feeling frightened and uncanny. No
doubt more than once the horses had bolted, the mail cart had stuck in
the mud, they had been attacked by highwaymen, or had lost their way in
the blizzard....

"I can fancy what adventures you must have had in eleven years!" said
the student. "I expect it must be terrible driving?"

He said this and expected that the postman would tell him som