e wire blind of the parlour, had--as she afterwards repeatedly
declared--"felt her insides turn right over," when she saw the carriage
draw up. The conversation was prolonged and low toned. For the order
was of a peculiar and confidential character, demanding much
explanation on the one part, much application on the other. It was an
order, in short, wholly flattering to the self-esteem of the saddler,
both as tribute to his social discretion and his technical skill. Thus
did Josiah skip goat-like, being glad.

Meanwhile, Richard Calmady waited without, resting his aching arms,
gazing down the wide, dusty street, his senses lulled by the flutter of
the sycamore leaves overhead. The said street offered but small matter
of interest. For Farley Row is one of those dead-alive little towns on
the borders of the forest land, across which progress, even at the time
in question, 1856, had written Ichabod in capital letters. During the
early years of the century some sixty odd coaches, plying upon the
London and Portsmouth road, would stop to change horses at the White
Lion in the course of each twenty-four hours. That was the golden age
of the Row. Horns twanged, heavy wheels rumbled, steaming teams were
led away, with drooping heads, into the spacious inn yard, and fresh
horses stepped out cheerily to take their place between the traces. The
next stage across Spendle Flats was known as a risky one. Legends of
Claude Duval and his fellow-highwaymen still haunt the woods and moors
that top the long hill going northward. And the passengers by those
sixty coaches were wont to recover themselves from terrors escaped, or
fortify themselves against terrors to come, by plentiful libations at
the bar of the handsome red-brick inn. The house did a roaring trade.
But now the traffic upon the great road had assumed a local and
altogether undemonstrative character. The coaches had fallen into
lumber, the spanking teams had each and all made their squalid last
journey to the knacker's; and the once famous Gentlemen of the Road had
long lain at rest in mother earth's lap--sleeping there none the less
peacefully because the necks of many of them had suffered a nasty rick
from the hangman's rope, and because the hard-trodden pavement of the
prison-yard covered them.

The fine stables of the White Lion stood tenantless, now, from year's
end to year's end. Rats scampered, and bats squeaked in unlovely
ardours of courtship, about the ranges of em