to
conceal the body of a total stranger, their uncle lay in dreamless sleep
a few hundred yards deeper in the wood.

He was awakened by the jolly note of a bugle from the neighbouring high
road, where a char-a-banc was bowling by with some belated tourists. The
sound cheered his old heart, it directed his steps into the bargain, and
soon he was on the highway, looking east and west from under his vizor,
and doubtfully revolving what he ought to do. A deliberate sound of
wheels arose in the distance, and then a cart was seen approaching, well
filled with parcels, driven by a good-natured looking man on a double
bench, and displaying on a board the legend, 'I Chandler, carrier'. In
the infamously prosaic mind of Mr Finsbury, certain streaks of poetry
survived and were still efficient; they had carried him to Asia Minor
as a giddy youth of forty, and now, in the first hours of his recovered
freedom, they suggested to him the idea of continuing his flight in Mr
Chandler's cart. It would be cheap; properly broached, it might even
cost nothing, and, after years of mittens and hygienic flannel, his
heart leaped out to meet the notion of exposure.

Mr Chandler was perhaps a little puzzled to find so old a gentleman, so
strangely clothed, and begging for a lift on so retired a roadside.
But he was a good-natured man, glad to do a service, and so he took the
stranger up; and he had his own idea of civility, and so he asked no
questions. Silence, in fact, was quite good enough for Mr Chandler;
but the cart had scarcely begun to move forward ere he found himself
involved in a one-sided conversation.

'I can see,' began Mr Finsbury, 'by the mixture of parcels and boxes
that are contained in your cart, each marked with its individual label,
and by the good Flemish mare you drive, that you occupy the post of
carrier in that great English system of transport which, with all its
defects, is the pride of our country.'

'Yes, sir,' returned Mr Chandler vaguely, for he hardly knew what to
reply; 'them parcels posts has done us carriers a world of harm.'

'I am not a prejudiced man,' continued Joseph Finsbury. 'As a young
man I travelled much. Nothing was too small or too obscure for me to
acquire. At sea I studied seamanship, learned the complicated knots
employed by mariners, and acquired the technical terms. At Naples,
I would learn the art of making macaroni; at Nice, the principles of
making candied fruit. I never went to the ope