XIX

Beyondits grand old church, Darlington has nothing of great antiquity to show the stranger, save one object of very high antiquity indeed, before whose hoary age even Norman and Early English architecture is comparatively a thing of yesterday. This is the Bulmer Stone, a huge boulder of granite, brought by glacial action in some far-away ice-age from the heights of Shap Fell in distant Westmoreland to the spot on which it has ever since rested. Darlington has meanwhile risen out of the void and lonely countryside; history has passed by, from the remote times of the blue-stained Britons, down to the present era of theblue-habited police; and that old stone remains beside the road to the North. Modern pavements encircle it, and gas-lamps shame with their modernity its inconceivable age, but not with too illuminating a ray, and the stranger roaming Darlington after nightfall has barked his shins against the unexpected bulk of the Bulmer Stone, just as effectually as countless generations before him have done.

The long rise of Harrowgate Hill conducts out of Darlington and leads on to Coatham Mundeville, a tiny hamlet on the crest of a hill, with an eighteenth-century house, a row of cottages, and an inn, making together an imposing figure against the sky-line, although when reached they are commonplace enough. The village of Aycliffe lies beyond, on its height, overlooking a scene of quarrying and coal-mining; an outlook which until Cromwell’s time was one of dense oak-woods. He it was who caused those woods to be felled to mend the road on to Durham and make it firm enough for his ordnance to pass. Whether the name of Aycliffe derives (as some would have it) from “oak hill,” or whether it was originally “High Cliffe,” or obtains its name from some forgottenhaia, or enclosure on this eminence, let us leave for others to fight over: it is an equally unprofitable and insoluble discussion. As well might one hope to obtain a verbatim report of one or other of the two Synods held here in 782 and 789, of which two battered Saxon crosses in the churchyard are thought to be relics, as to determine this question.

For the rest, Aycliffe is quite unremarkable. Leaving it, and coming downhill over an arched crossing over a marsh, dignified by the name of Howden Bridge, we reach Traveller’s Rest and its two inns, the “Bay Horse” and “Gretna Green Wedding Inn.” An indescribable air of romance dignifies these two solitary inns that confront one another across the highway, and form all there is of Traveller’s Rest. The “Wedding Inn,” the more modern of the two, has for its sign the picture of a marriage ceremony in that famous Border smithy. The “Bay Horse” is the original Traveller’sRest. Dating back far into the old coaching and posting times, its stables of that era still remain; but what renders the old house particularly notable is its sign, the odd figure of a horse within an oval, seen on its wall, with the word “Liberty” in company with the name of “Traveller’s Rest” and the less romantic than commercial announcement of “Spirituous Liquors.” Once, perhaps, painted the correct tint of a “bay” horse, the elements have reduced it to an unobtrusive brown that bids fair to modestly fade into the obscurity of a neutral tint, unless the landlord presently fulfils his intention, expressed to the present historian, of having it repainted, to render it “more viewly”; which appears to be the North-country phrase for making a thing “more presentable.” To this old sign belongs the legend of a prisoner being escorted to Durham Gaol and escaping through the horse ridden by his mounted guard throwing its rider near here. Hence the word “Liberty.”

Traveller’s Rest

Woodham, a mile distant down the road, bears a name recalling the times when it was in fact a hamlet in those oak woods of which we spoke at Aycliffe. It is now just a group of two or three cottages and ahumble inn, the “Stag,” in a dip of the way. Beyond it comes Rushyford Bridge, a pretty scene, where a little tributary of the Skerne prattles over its stony bed and disappears under the road beside that old-time posting-house and inn, the “Wheatsheaf.” The old house still stands and faces down the road; but it has long since ceased to be an inn, and, remodelled in recent taste, is now a private residence. The old drive up to the house is now converted into lawns and flower-beds. Groups of that graceful tree, the black poplar, overhang the scene and shade the little hamlet that straggles down a lane to the left hand. The old “Wheatsheaf” has its memories. It was a favourite resort of Lord Eldon’s. Holt, the landlord, was a boon companion of his. The great lawyer’s vacations were for many years spent here, and he established a cellar of his own in the house, stocked chiefly with “Carbonell’s Fine Old Military Blackstrap Newcastle Port,” of which, although they were decidedly not military, he and his host used to drink seven bottles a day between them, valiant topers that they were. On Saturdays—we have it on the authority of Sydney Smith—they drank eight bottles; the extra one being to fortify themselves against the Sunday morning’s service. Lord Eldon invariably attended church at Rushyford, and compelled his unwilling host to go with him. In London he rarely went, remarking when reproached that he,a buttress of the church, should fail in his devotions, that he was “only an outside buttress.”

Rushyford Bridge

Lord Eldon was a mean man. It is a defect to be noticed in many others who, like him, have acquired wealth by great personal efforts; with him, however, it reached a height and quality not frequently met. He was not merely “stingy,” but mean in the American sense of the word. Contemporary with Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and other valiant “four-bottle men” of a century ago, and with an almost unlimited capacity for other persons’ port, his brother, Lord Stowell, aptly said of him that “he would take anygivenquantity.”

With these memories to beguile the way we come to Ferryhill, a mining village crowning a ridge looking over Spennymoor and the valley of the Wear. To Ferryhill came in 1634 three soldiers—a captain, a lieutenant, and an ensign—from Norwich on a tour and in search of adventure. These were early days for tours; days, too, when adventures were not far to seek. However, risky though their trip may have been, they returned in safety, as may be judged from the lieutenant having afterwards published an account of their wanderings through twenty-six English counties. Clad in Lincoln green, like young foresters, they sped the miles with jest and observations on the country they passed through. Of Ferryhill they remark that “such as know it knows it overtops and commands a great part of the country.” On this Pisgah, then, they unpacked their travelling plate and “borrowed a cup of refreshing health from a sweet and most pleasant spring”; by which it seems that there were teetotallers in those days also. Those were the days before coal-mines and blast-furnaces cut up the country, and before Spennymoor, away on the left, was converted from a moorland into a township; a sufficiently startling change.

Ferryhill: The Abandoned Road-Works

Seen from down the road looking southwards, Ferryhill forms an impressive coronet to the long ridge of hill on which it stands; its rough, stone-built cottages—merely commonplace to a nearer view—taking an unwarranted importance from thebold serrated outlines they present against the sky, and looking like the bastioned outworks of some Giant Blunderbore’s ogreish stronghold. The traveller from the south, passing through Ferryhill and looking backwards from the depths of the valley road, is cheated of a part of this romantic impression; he has explored the arid and commonplace village and has lost all possibility of illusion. Let us, therefore, envy the pilgrims from the north. It is, indeed, a highly interesting view, looking back upon Ferryhill, and one touched with romance of both the gentle and the terrifying sort. In the first place, to that tall embankment seen in the accompanying drawing of the scene belongs a story. You perceive that earthwork to be unfinished. It sets out from the cutting seen in the distant hillside, and, crossing the road which comes in a breakneck curve downhill, pursues a straight and level course for the corresponding rise on the hither side, stopping, incomplete, somewhat short of it. “An abandoned railway,” thinks the stranger, and so it looks to be; but it is, in fact, a derelict enterprise embarked upon at the close of the coaching era by a local Highway Board for the purpose of giving a flat and straight road across the valley. It begins with a long cutting on the southern side of the hill on which the village stands, and, going behind the back of the houses, emerges as seen in the picture. The tolls authorised would have made the undertaking a paying one, only road travel ceased before the work was finished. Railways came to put an end to the project and to inflict upon the projectors a ruinous loss.

A more darkling romance, however, broods upon the scene. Away on the western sky-line stands the conspicuous tower of Merrington church, and near it the farmhouse where, on January 28, 1685, Andrew Mills, a servant of the Brass family, who then farmed the adjacent land, murdered the three children in the absence of their parents. It is a story of whose shuddering horror nothing is lost in contemporary accounts, but we will leave it to the imagination.It is sufficient to say that the assassin, a lad of eighteen years of age, seems to have been half-witted, speaking of having been instigated to the deed by a demon who enjoined him to “Kill—kill.” To be more or less mad was no surety against punishment in those times, and so Andrew Mills was found guilty and hanged. Justice seems to have been devilish then, for he was cut down and hanged in chains, after the fashion of the time, beside the road. The peculiar devilry of the deed appears in the fact that he was not quite dead, and survived in his iron cage on the gibbet for days. His sweetheart brought him food, but he could not eat, for every movement of his jaw caused it to be pierced with an iron spike. So she brought milk instead, and so sustained the wretched creature for some time. Legends still recount how he lingered here in agony, his cries by day and night scaring the neighbouring cottagers from their homes, until the shrieks and groans at length ceased, and death came to put an end to his sufferings. The site of the gibbet was by the Thinford inn, near the head of the embankment. The gibbet-post lasted long. Known as “Andrew Mills’ Stob,” its wood was reputed of marvellous efficacy for toothache, rheumatism, heartburn, and indeed as wide a range of ailments as arecured by any one of the modern quack medicines that fill the advertisement columns of our newspapers in this enlightened age. It was a sad day for Ferryhill and the neighbourhood when the last splinter of Andrew Mills’ gibbet was used up, and what the warty, scrofulous, ulcerous, and rheumaticky inhabitants did then the imagination refuses to consider.

Merrington Church

Thesurrounding districts anciently possessed a prime horror (which has lost nothing in the accumulated legends of centuries) in the “Brawn of Brancepeth.” This terror of the countryside, resolved into plain matter of fact, seems to have been a wild boar. Boars were “brawns” in those days, and the adjacent “Brancepeth” is just “brawn’s path,” as Brandon is supposed to have been “brawn den.” This, to modern ideas, not very terrible wild animal, seems to have thoroughly alarmed half a county:—

He feared not ye loute with hys staffe,Nor yet for ye knyghte in hys mayle,He cared no more for ye monke with hys boke,Than the fyendis in depe Croix Dale.

It will be seen by the last line in this verse that the author was evidently prepared to back the devil and all his works against anything the Church could do. But that is a detail. The wild boar was eventually slain by Hodge of the Ferry, who ended him by the not very heroic process of digging a deep pit in the course of his usual path, and when the animal fell in, cutting his head off, doubtless from a safe point of vantage above. Divested of legendary trappings, we can readily picture the facts: the redoubtable Hodge hiding in the nearest and tallest tree until the wild boar came along and fell into the hole, when the champion descended and despatched him in safety.The traditional scene of this exploit is half a mile to the east of Ferryhill, at a farmstead called Cleve’s Cross.

Croixdale, or, as modern times have vulgarised its name, Croxdale, lies on our way to Durham, past the hills of High and Low Butcher Race. Now a shabby roadside village, with a railway station of that name on the main line of the North Eastern Railway, this neighbourhood has also had its romance. The road descends steeply to the river Wear, and in the vicinity is the dark hollow which mediæval superstition peopled with evil spirits, the “fyendis” who, as the ballad says, cared nothing for the monk with his book. To evict these hardy sprites a cross was erected, hence “Croixdale”; but with what result is not stated.

Road, Rail, and River: Sunderland Bridge

The cross roads here, too, have their story, for Andrew Tate, a highwayman, convicted of murdering and robbing seven persons near Sunderland Bridge, was hanged where they branch off, in 1602, and afterwards buried beneath the gallows. Now that no devils or highwaymen haunt the lovely woodland borders of the Wear at this spot, it is safe to linger by Sunderland Bridge, just below Croxdale, where the exceedingly picturesque old stone bridge of four arches carries theroad over the river. Perhaps the distant railway viaduct may spoil the sylvan solitude of the place, but, on the other hand, it may help to emphasise it. Across that viaduct rush and roar the expresses to and from London and the North; while the fisherman plys his contemplative craft from the sandy beaches below the bridge. Many a wearied coach passenger, passing this spot in the old days on summer evenings, must have longingly drunk in the beauty of the scene. Other passengers by coach had a terrible experience here in 1822, when the mail was overturned on the bridge and two passengers killed.

Thoresby, in hisDiary, under date of May 1703, describes one of his journeys with his usual inaccuracy as to the incidence of places, and mentions Sunderland Bridge, together with another, close by. This would be Browney Bridge, to which we come in a quarter of a mile nearer Durham; only Thoresby places it the other way, where, on the hillside, such a bridge would be impossible. He mentions seeing the legend, “Sockeld’s Leap, 1692,” inscribed on one of the coping-stones, and tells how two horsemen, racing on this road, jumped on the bridge together with such force that one of them, breaking down the battlements of the bridge, fell into the stream below, neither he nor his horse having any injury.

Ascending the steep rise beyond Browney Bridge, Farewell Hall on the left is passed, the place taking its name, according to the commonly received story, from the Earl of Derwentwater bidding farewell to his friends here when on his way, a captured rebel, to London and the scaffold, in 1715. Climbing one more ridge, the first view of Durham Cathedral is gained on coming down the corresponding descent, a long straight run into the outskirts of the city. Durham Cathedral appears, majestic against the sky, long before any sign of the city itself is noted; a huge bulk dominating the scene and dwarfing the church of St. Oswald at the foot of the hill, itself no inconsiderable building. To the right hand rises Nine Tree Hill, withthe nine trees that stand sponsors to it still weirdly conspicuous on its crest, and down beneath it spread the grimy and unkempt works of the Old Elvet Colliery.

Entrance to Durham

Thetraveller pursuing his northward way comes into Durham by the back door, as it were, for the suburb of Old Elvet through which the Great North Road conducts to the ancient city is one of the least prepossessing of entrances, and, besides being dirty and shabby, is endowed with a cobble-stoned road which, as if its native unevenness were not sufficient, may generally be found strewed with fragments of hoop-iron, clinkers, and other puncturing substances calculated to give tragical pauses to the exploring cyclist who essays to follow the route whose story is set forth in these pages. Old Elvet is in no sense a prepossessing suburb of Durham, but its steep and stony street is a true exemplar of the city’s other highways and byways, which are nothing if not breakneck and badly paved, as well as being badly kept. But facing Old Elvet’s long street is still to be found the “Three Tuns,” where coach passengers in the closing years of that era delighted to stay, and where, although the well-remembered hostess of the inn has been gathered to Abraham’s bosom, the guest on entering is still served in his bedroom with the welcoming glass of cherry-brandy which it has for the best part of a century been the pleasing custom of the house to present. No other such ambrosial cup as this, rare in itself and hallowed by old memories, greets the wayfarer along the roads nowadays.

From here, or other headquarters, let us set forth to explore the city, planted on a craggy site looking down upon the encompassing Wear that flows deep down between rocky banks clothed thickly with woods. To enter the city proper from “Old Elvet,” one mustneeds cross Elvet Bridge, still narrow, although the subject of a widening by which its width was doubled in 1805. How the earlier coaches crossed it is therefore something of a problem.

It has often been claimed for Durham that it is “the most picturesque city in England,” and if by that contention we are to understand the site of it to be meant, the claim must be allowed. Cities are not so many that there is much difficulty in estimating their comparative charms; and were it even a question of towns, few might be found to have footholds of such beauty.

The Wear and that rocky bluff which it renders all but an island, seemed to the distracted monks of Lindisfarne, worn out with a century’s wandering over the north of England in search of safety from the marauding heathen Danes who had laid waste the coast and their island cathedral, an ideal spot; and so to the harsh necessities of over nine hundred years ago we owe both this selection of a site and the building upon it of a cathedral which should be an outpost for the Lord in the turbulent North and a castle for the protection of his servants. It was in the year 995 that, after a hundred and twenty years of constant wandering, the successors of those monks who had fled from Lindisfarne with the body of their revered bishop, the famous Saint Cuthbert, came here, still bearing his hallowed remains. Their last journey had been from Ripon. Coming near this spot, the Saint, who though by this time dead for over three hundred years, was as masterful as he had been in life, manifested his approval of the neighbourhood by refusing to be carried any further. When the peripatetic bishop and monks found that his coffin remained immovable they fasted and prayed for three days, after which disciplinary exercise, one of their number had a vision wherein it was revealed to him that the Saint should be carried to Dunholme, where he was to be received into a place of rest. So, setting forth again, distressed in mind by not knowing where Dunholme lay, but hoping for asupernatural guidance, they came presently to “a place surrounded with rocks, where there was a river of rapid waves and fishes of various kinds mingling with the floods. Great forests grew there, and in deep valleys were wild animals of many sorts, and deer innumerable.” It was when they were come to this romantic place that they heard a milkmaid calling to her companion, and asking where her cow was. The answer, that “she was in Dunholme” was “an happy and heavenly sound to the distressed monks, who thereby had intelligence that their journey’s end was at hand, and the Saint’s body near its resting-place.” Pressing onward, they found the cow in Dunholme, and here, on the site of the present Cathedral, they raised their first “little Church of Wands and Branches.” The Cathedral and the Castle that they and their immediate successors raised have long since been replaced; but the great Norman piles of rugged fame and stern battlemented and loopholed fortress crowning the same rocky heights prove that those who kept the Church anchored here had need to watch as well as pray, to fight secular battles as well as wage war against the devil and all his works. It was this double necessity that made the bishops of Durham until our own time bishops-palatine; princes of the State as well as of the Church, and in the old days men of the sword as well as of the pastoral staff; and their cathedral shadows forth these conditions of their being in no uncertain way. There is no finer pile of Norman masonry in this country than this great edifice, whose central tower and east end are practically the only portions not in that style, and of these that grand and massive tower, although of the Perpendicular period, is akin to the earlier parts in feeling; nor is there another quite so impressive a tower in England as this, either for itself or in its situation, with the sole exception of “Boston Stump,” that beacon raised against the sky for many miles across the Lincolnshire levels.

Durham Cathedral, from Prebend’s Bridge

Woods and river still surround the Cathedral, as Turner shows in his exquisite view from the Prebend’sBridge, one among many other glorious and unexpected glimpses which the rugged nature of Durham’s site provides from all points, but incomparably the best of all. It is here that, most appropriately, there has been placed a decorative tablet, carved in oak, and bearing the quotation from Sir Walter Scott, beginning—

Half House of God, half Castle; ’gainst the Scot;

a quotation that gains additional point from the circumstance of the battle of Neville’s Cross having been fought against the invading Scots, October 17th, 1346, within sight from the Cathedral roofs. This view is one of Turner’s infrequent topographically accurate works. Perhaps even he felt the impossibility of improving upon the beauty of the scene.

Still, annually, after evensong on May 29th, the lay clerks and choristers of the Cathedral ascend to the roof of the great central tower, in their cassocks and surplices, and sing anthems. The first, Farrant’s “Lord, for Thy tender mercies’ sake,” is a reference to the national crime of the execution of Charles the First, and is sung facing south. The second, “Therefore with angels and archangels,” by V. Novello, expressing the pious sentiment that the martyred king shall rest in Paradise, in company with those bright beings, is sung facing east; and the third, “Give Peace in our time, O Lord,” by W. H. Callcott, facing north.

The origin of this observance was the thanksgiving for the victory of Neville’s Cross, a famous and a complete success, when fifteen thousand Scots were slain and David the Second, the Scottish king and many of his nobles, captured. It was to the special intervention of St. Cuthbert, whose sacred banner was carried by Prior John Fossor to Maiden Bower, a spot overlooking the battlefield, that this signal destruction of the enemy was ascribed. The Prior prayed beside it, but his monks are said to have offered up their petitions from the more distant, and safer, vantage-point of the Cathedral towers. Perhaps they had a turn ofagnosticism in their minds; but, at any rate, they took no risks.

The original tower-topTe Deumafterwards sung on the anniversary seems to have been discontinued at the Reformation. The revival came after the King’s Restoration in 1660, when the day was altered to May 29th, to give the celebration the character of a rejoicing at the return of Charles the Second. This revival itself fell into disuse in the eighteenth century, being again restored in 1828, and continued ever since.

The battlefield of Neville’s Cross lies to the west of the Cathedral, so no singing takes place on the western side of the tower. The popular, but mistaken, idea in Durham is that this is because a choir-boy once overbalanced on that side and fell from the tower.

If you would see how Castle and Cathedral are situated with regard to the busy modern city, there is no such place as the railway station, whence they are seen dominating the mass of houses, among the smoke-wreaths of commerce, like the martyrs of old steadfast amidst their burning faggots. If again, reversing the order of precedence as seen in the view from Prebend’s Bridge, you would have the Castle in the forefront and the Cathedral behind, it is from the Framwellgate Bridge, carrying the Great North Road over the Wear, that another lovely glimpse is seen, ranging to Prebend’s Bridge itself.

Buttime grows short, and we have not long to linger at Durham. Much else might be said of the Cathedral; of Saint Cuthbert’s Shrine, and of the vandal Wyatt, who “restored” the Cathedral in 1775, cutting away, in the process, a depth of four inches from the stonework of much of the exterior. The work cost £30,000, and resulted in eleven hundred tons weight of stone chippings being removed from the building. If that“restorer” had had his way, he would have destroyed the beautiful Galilee Chapel that projects from the west front, and forms so uniquely interesting a feature of Late Norman work. His idea was to drive a carriage road round this way. The work of destruction had, indeed, already been begun when it was stopped by more reverent men.

The Sanctuary Knocker

A curious relic still remains upon the door of the Cathedral’s north porch, in the form of a huge knocker, dating back to Norman times. Cast in the shape of a grinning monster’s head, a ring hanging from its jaws, it is the identical sanctuary knocker of Saint Cuthbert’s Sanctuary, which was in use from the foundation of the Cathedral until 1524. All fugitives, whatever their crimes, who succeeded in escaping to Durham, and reaching the bounds of “Saint Cuthbert’s Peace,” were safe from molestation during thirty-seven days. A criminal, grasping the ring of this knocker, could not be torn from it by his pursuers, under pain of their being subjected to excommunication; and lest there should be bold spirits whom even this could not affright, there were always two monks stationed, day and night, in a room above the porch, to watch for fugitives. When admitted, the criminal confessed his crime, with every circumstance attending it, his confession being taken down in writing, in the presence of witnesses; a bell ringing in the Galilee tower all the while, giving notice that some one had fled to the protection of Saint Cuthbert. After these formalities, the fugitive was clothed with a black gown, bearing a yellow cross on the left shoulder: the badge of the Saint whose protection he had secured. After the days of grace had expired, and in the event of no pardon being obtained, ceremonies were gone through before the Shrine, in which the malefactor solemnly forswore his native land for ever. Then, safeguarded to the coast, he was shipped out of the kingdom by the first vessel sailing after his arrival.

Durham Castle and Cathedral from below Framwellgate Bridge

There must have been many an exciting chase along the roads in those times, and many a criminal who richlydeserved punishment must have escaped it by the very skin of his teeth. Many another, no doubt, was seized and handed over to justice, or slain, on the threshold of safety. Other fugitives still—and here Saint Cuthbert appears in better guise—victims of hatred and oppression, private or political, claimed the saintly ægis, and so escaped the vengeance of their enemies. So, looking upon the ferociously grinning mask of the knocker, glaring with eyeless sockets upon Palace Green, we can reconstruct the olden times when, at his last gasp, the flying wretch seized the ring and so came into safety. By night, the scene was more impressive still, for there were crystals in those sockets then, and a lamp burning behind, so that the fugitive could see his haven from afar, and make for it.

To-day, Saint Cuthbert avails no man, as the county gaol and the assize courts sufficiently prove, and Durham city is essentially modern, from the coal-grit that powders its dirty streets to the awfully grotesque effigy of a Marquis of Londonderry that lends so diabolical an air to the Market-place, where the Statute Fair is held, and where he sits, a coal-black effigy across his coal-black horse, towering over the steam merry-go-rounds, like Satan amid the revelries of a Walpurgis Night. This bronze effigy is probably the most grotesque statue in the British Isles, and loses nothing of that quality in the noble Marquis being represented in a hussar uniform with flying dolman over his shoulders, and a busby, many sizes too large for him, on his head, in an attitude as though ferociously inviting the houses on the other side of the street to “come on.”

That diarising Scotswoman, Mrs. Calderwood of Coltness, travelling south in 1756, wrote:—

“We dined at Durhame, and I went to see the cathedrall; it is a prodigious bulky building. It was on Sunday betwixt services, and in the piazzas there were several boys playing at ball. I asked the girl that attended me, if it was the custome for the boys to play at ball on Sunday: she said, ‘they play on otherdays, as well as on Sundays.’ She called her mother to show me the Church; and I suppose, by my questions, the woman took me for a heathen, as I found she did not know of any other mode of worship but her own; so, that she might not think the Bishop’s chair defiled by my sitting down in it, I told her I was a Christian, though the way of worship in my country differed from hers. In particular, she stared when I asked what the things were that they kneeled upon, as they appeared to me to be so many Cheshire cheeses.”

Framwellgate Bridge

They were hassocks: articles apparently then not known to Presbyterians.

And so she continued southward:—

“Next day, the 7th, we dined none, but baited at different places, and betwixt Doncaster and Bautry a man rode about in an odd way, whom we suspected for a highwayman. Upon his coming near, John Rattray pretended to make a quarle with the post boy, and let him know that he keept good powder and ball to keep such folks as him in order; upon which the felow scampered off cross the common.”

The Great North Road leaves Durham overFramwellgate Bridge, built by Bishop Flambard in Norman times. Although altered and repaired in the fifteenth century and later, it is still substantially the same bridge. There was once a fortified gateway on it, but that was taken down in 1760. Bridge, River, Castle, and Cathedral here form a majestic picture.

Andnow to take the open road again. The chief features of the road between Durham and Newcastle are coal-pits, dismal pit villages, and coal-dust. Not at once, however, is the traveller introduced to these, and the ascent out of Durham, through the wooded banks of Dryburn, is very pretty. It is at Framwellgate Moor, a mile and a half from the city, that the presence of coal begins to make itself felt, in the rows of unlovely cottages, and in the odd figures of the pitmen, who may be seen returning from their work, with grimy faces and characteristic miner’s dress. Adjoining this village, and indistinguishable from it by the stranger, is the roadside collection of cottages known as “Pity Me,” taking its name from the hunted fox in the sign of the “Lambton Hounds” inn.

Framwellgate is scarce left behind before there rises up in the far distance, on the summit of one of the many hills to the north-east, a hill-top temple resembling the Athenian Acropolis, and as you go northward it is the constant companion of your journey for some seven or eight miles. This is “Penshaw Monument,” erected on that windy height in 1844, four years after his death, to the memory of John George Lambton, first Earl of Durham. It cost £6,000, and commemorates the championship of the Reform movement in its earlier and precarious days by that statesman. Like many another monument, impressive at a distance, a near approach to it leads to disillusion, for its classic outlines are allied to coarse workmanship, and its eighteen greatcolumns are hollow. Penshaw, deriving its name from Celtic words, signifying a wooded height, still has its woodlands to justify the name given nearly a thousand years ago.

Penshaw Monument

The little town of Chester-le-Street lies three miles ahead, past the few cottages of Plawsworth, once the site of a turnpike-gate, and by Chester Moor and the pretty wooded hollow of Chester Dene, where the Con Burn goes rippling through the undergrowth to join the river Wear, and a bridge carries the highway across the gap. Approaching Chester-le-Street, the bright yellow sandstone mass of Lumley Castle, the ancient seat of the Earl of Scarborough, is prominent in the valley to the right, while beyond it rise the woods of Lambton Castle, the Earl of Durham’s domain. The neighbourhood of Chester-le-Street yet preserves the weird legend of the “Lambton Worm,” and Worm Hill is still pointed out as the home of that fabulous monster who laid the country under contribution for the satisfying of his voracious appetite, and was kept in good humour by being provided with the milk of nine cows daily. Many had essayed to slay the serpent and had fallen victims instead, until the heir of Lambton, returned from the red fields and hair’s-breadth escapes of foreign wars, set forth to free the countryside from the terror. But before he started, he was warned (so the legend runs), that unlesshe vowed, being successful in his enterprise, to slay the first living thing he met on his return, the lords of Lambton would never, for nine generations to come, die in their beds. He took that vow, and, armed with his trusty sword and a suit of armour made of razor-blades, met and slew the Worm, who coiled himself round the knight in order to crush him as he had the others, and so was cut in pieces against the keen edges. But the victor on returning was met by his father, instead of by the favourite dog who had been destined for the sacrifice. The sword dropped from his nerveless hand, and he broke the vow. What mattered it where the future generations died; in their beds, or, as warriors might wish, in their boots?

As a matter of fact, the next nine heirs of Lambton did die more or less violent deaths; a circumstance which is pointed to in proof of the legend’s truth. If other proof be wanting, one has only to visit Lambton Castle, where the identical trough from which the Worm drank his daily allowance of milk is still shown the curious tourist!

Chester-le-Street bears little in its appearance to hint at its great age and interesting history. A very up-to-date little town, whose prosperity derives from its position as a marketing centre for the surrounding pitmen, it supports excellent shops and rejoices in the possession of Co-operative Societies, whose objects are to provide their subscribers with whatever they want at cost price, and to starve the trader, who trades for profit, out of existence. That shops and societies exist side by side, and that both look prosperous, seems remarkable, not to say miraculous. Let the explanation of these things be left to other hands.

The name of Chester-le-Street doubly reveals the Roman origin of the place from the castle on the road which existed here in those distant times, and has easily survived the name of Cunecaster, which the Saxons gave it. At Cunecaster the ancient bishopric of Bernicia, forerunner of the present See of Durham, had its cathedral for a hundred and thirteen years,fromA.D.882 to 995; having been removed from the Farne Islands on the approach of the heathen Danes, the monks carrying the coffin of their sainted bishop, St. Cuthbert, with them on their wanderings. The dedication of the present church to Saints Mary and Cuthbert is a relic of that time, but the building itself is not older than the thirteenth century. It preserves an ancient anchorites’ cell.

The finest surviving anchorage in England is this of Chester-le-Street. It is built against the north wall of the tower, and is of two storeys with two rooms on each. Two “low-side” windows communicating with the churchyard remain, and a smaller opening into the church is close by. Through this, food and offerings were passed to the anchorite, together with the keys of the church treasure-chest, left in his custody by the clergy. From this orifice the holy hermit could obtain a view all over the building, and an odd hagioscope or “squint,” pierced through one of the pillars, allowed of his seeing the celebration of Mass at a side-chapel, in addition to that at the High Altar. This was no damp and inconvenient hermitage, for when the anchorite was kicked out at the Reformation, and bidden go and earn an honest living, his old home was let to three widows. Eventually, in 1619, the curate found the place so desirable—or, as a house-agent would say, so “eligible”—that he took up his abode there.

The church also contains fourteen monumental effigies ascribed, without much truth in the ascription, to the Lumleys. John, Lord Lumley, collected them from ruined abbeys and monasteries in the neighbourhood some three hundred years ago, and called them ancestors. He was technically right; for we all descend from Adam, but not quite so right when, finding he could not steal a sufficient number of these “ancestors,” he commissioned the local masons to rough-hew him out a few more. They are here to this day, and an ill-favoured gang they look, too.

The town of Chester-le-Street found little favourwith De Foe, who, passing through it, found the place “an old dirty thoroughfare town.” The modern traveller cannot say the same, but it is possible that if he happened to pass through on Shrove Tuesday, he would describe the inhabitants as savages; for on that day the place is given up to a game of football played in the streets, the town taking sides, and when the ball is not within reach, kicking one another. With a proper respect for their shop fronts, the trades-folk all close on this day.

The three miles between Chester-le-Street and Birtley afford a wide-spreading panorama of the Durham coal-field. Pretty country before its mineral wealth began to be developed, its hills and dales reveal chimney-shafts and hoisting-gear in every direction, and smoke-wreaths, blown across country by the raging winds of the north, blacken everything. Birtley is a typical pit village and its approaches characteristic of the coal country. The paths are black, the hedges and trees ragged and sooty, and tramways from the collieries cross the road itself, unfenced, the trucks dropping coal in the highway. One coal village is as like another as are two peas. They are all frankly unornamental; all face the road on either side, each cottage the exact replica of its unlovely neighbour, and the footpaths are almost invariably unpaved. These are the homes of the “Geordies,” as the pitmen once were invariably called. They were rough in their ways, but very different from the more recent sort: the trade-unionist miner: the better educated but more discontented and unlovable man. But “Geordie,” the old-type typical pitman, was not a bad fellow, by any means. If any man worked, literally, by the sweat of his brow, it was he, in his eight hours’ shift down in the stifling tunnels of the coal-mine. He earned a high wage and deserved a higher, for he carried his life in his hand, and any day that witnessed his descent half a mile or so into the black depths of the pit might also have seen an accident which, by the fall of a roof of coal, by fire or flood, explosion, or the unseen butdeadly choke-damp, should end his existence, and that of hundreds like him.

The midday aspect of a coal village is singularly quiet and empty. Scarce a man or boy is to be seen. Half of them are at work down below, in the first day shift to which they went at an early hour of the morning: and those of the night, who came up when the others descended, are enjoying a well-earned repose. A coal-miner just come to bank from his coal-hewing, looks anything but the respectable fellow he generally is, nowadays. With his peaked leathern cap, thick short coat, woollen muffler, limp knickerbockers, blue worsted stockings, heavy lace-up boots and dirty face, he looks like a half-bleached nigger football-player. When washed, his is a pallid countenance which the stranger, unused to the colourless faces of those who work underground, might be excused for thinking that of one recovering from an illness. And washing is a serious business with “Geordie.” Every pitman’s cottage has its tub wherein he “cleans” himself, as he expresses it, while the women-folk crowd the street. What the cottages lack in accommodation they make up for in cleanliness and display. The pitman’s wife wages an heroic and never-ending war against dirt and grime, and both have an astonishing love of finery and bright colours which reveals itself even down to the door-step, coloured a brilliant red, yellow, or blue, according to individual taste. Nowadays football claims “Geordie’s” affections before anything else. That rowdy game, more than any other, serves to work off any superfluous energy, and there are stories, more or less true, which tell of pitmen, tired of waiting for “t’ ball,” starting “t’ gaame” by kicking one another instead! Coursing, dog-fancying, and the breeding of canaries are other favourite pitmen’s pastimes, and they dearly love a garden. Where an outdoor garden is impossible, a window garden is a favourite resource, and even the ugliest cottages take on a certain smartness when to the yellow doorstep are added bright green window-shutters and a window full of scarletgeraniums. Very many pitmen are musical. We do not in this connection refer to the inevitable American organ whose doleful wails wring your very heart-strings as you pass the open cottage doors on Sunday afternoons, but to the really expert violinists often found in the pit villages.

The Coal Country

AtHarlowgreen Lane, where a little wayside inn, the “Coach and Horses,” stands beside a wooded dingle, we have the only pleasant spot before reaching Gateshead. Prettily rural, with an old-world air which no doubt gains an additional beauty after the ugliness of Birtley, it looks like one of those roadside scenes pencilled so deftly by Rowlandson, and might well have been one of the roadside stopping-places mentioned in that book so eloquent of the Great North Road, Smollett’sRoderick Random. No other work gives us so fine a description of old road travel, partly founded, no doubt, upon the author’s’ ownobservation of the wayfaring life of his time. Smollett himself travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh and London in 1739, and in the character of Roderick he narrates some of his own adventures. For a good part of the way Roderick found neither coach, cart, nor wagon on the road, and so journeyed with a train of pack-carriers so far as Newcastle, sitting on one of the horses’ pack-saddles. At Newcastle he met Strap, the barber’s assistant, and they journeyed to London together, sometimes afoot; at other times by stage-wagon, a method of travelling which, practised by those of small means, was a commonplace of the period at which Smollett wrote. It was a method which had not changed in the least since the days of James the First, and was to continue even into the first years of the nineteenth century. Fynes Morrison, who wrote anItinerary—and an appallingly dull work it is—in the reign of the British Solomon, talks of them as “long covered wagons, carrying passengers from place to place; but this kind of journeying is so tedious, by reason they must take wagon very early and come very late to their innes, that none but women and people of inferior condition travel in this sort.” Hogarth pictured these lumbering conveyances, which at their best performed fifteen miles a day, and Rowlandson and many other artists have employed their pencils upon them.

A Wayside Halt. After Rowlandson

Smollett is an eighteenth-century robust humorist, whose works are somewhat strong meat for our times; but he is a classic, and his works (unlike the usual run of “classics,” which are aptly said to be books which no one ever reads) have, each one, enough humour to furnish half a dozen modern authors, and are proof against age and change of taste. To the student of bygone times and manners,Roderick Randomaffords (oh! rare conjunction) both instruction and amusement. It is, of course, a work of fiction, but fiction based on personal experience, and palpitating with the life of the times in which it was written. It thus affords a splendid view of this great road about 1739, and of theway in which the thrifty Scots youths then commonly came up to town.

Their first night’s halt was at a hedgerow alehouse, half a mile from the road, to which came also a pedlar. The pedlar, for safety’s sake, screwed up the door of the bedroom in which they all slept. “I slept very sound,” says Roderick, “until midnight, when I was disturbed by a violent motion of the bed, which shook under me with a continual tremor. Alarmed at this phenomenon, I jogged my companion, whom, to my amazement, I found drenched in sweat, and quaking through every limb; he told me, with a low, faltering voice, that we were undone, for there was a bloody highwayman with loaded pistols in the next room; then, bidding me make as little noise as possible, he directed me to a small chink in the board partition, through which I could see a thick-set, brawny fellow, with a fierce countenance, sitting at a table with our young landlady, having a bottle of ale and a brace of pistols before him.” The highwayman was cursing his luck because a confederate, a coachman, had given intelligence of a rich coach-load to some other plunderer, who had gone off with £400 in cash, together with jewels and money.

“But did you find nothing worth taking which escaped the other gentleman of the road?” asked the landlady.

“Not much,” he replied. “I gleaned a few things, such as a pair of pops, silver-mounted (here they are); I took them, loaded, from the charge of the captain who had charge of the money the other fellow had taken, together with a gold watch which he had concealed in his breeches. I likewise found ten Portugal pieces in the shoes of a Quaker, whom the spirit moved to revile me, with great bitterness and devotion; but what I value myself mostly for is this here purchase, a gold snuff-box, my girl, with a picture on the inside of the lid, which I untied out of the tail of a pretty lady’s smock.”

Here the pedlar began to snore so loudly thatthe highwayman heard him through the partition. Alarmed, he asked the landlady who was there, and when she told him, travellers, replied, “Spies! you jade! But no matter, I’ll send them all to hell in an instant.”

The landlady pacified him by saying that they were only three poor Scotchmen; but Strap by this time was under the bed.

The night was one of alarms. Roderick and Strap awakened the pedlar, who, thinking the best course was not to wait for the doubtful chance of being alive to see the morning dawn, vanished with his pack through the window.

After having paid their score in the morning, the two set out again. They had not gone more than five miles before a man on horseback overtook them, whom they recognised as Mr. Rifle, the highwayman of the night before. He asked them if they knew who he was. Strap fell on his knees in the road. “For heaven’s sake, Mr. Rifle,” said he, “have mercy on us, we know you very well.”

“Oho!” cried the thief, “you do! But you shall never be evidence against me in this world, you dog!” and so saying, he drew a pistol and fired at the unfortunate shaver, who fell flat on the ground, without a word. He then turned upon Roderick, but the sound of horses’ hoofs was heard, and a party of travellers galloped up, leaving the highwayman barely time to ride off. One of them was the captain who had been robbed the day before. He was not, as may already have been gathered, a valiant man. He turned pale at the sight of Strap. “Gentlemen,” said he, “here’s murder committed; let us alight.” The others were for pursuing the highwayman, and the captain only escaped accompanying them by making his horse rear and snort, and pretending the animal was frightened. Fortunately, Strap “had received no other wound than what his fear had inflicted”; and after having been bled at an inn half a mile away, they were about to resume their journey, when a shoutingcrowd came down the road, with the highwayman in the midst, riding horseback with his hands tied behind him. He was being escorted to the nearest Justice of the Peace. Halting a while for refreshment, they dismounted Mr. Rifle and mounted guard, a circle of peasants armed with pitchforks round him. When they at length reached the magistrate’s house, they found he was away for the night, and so locked their prisoner in a garret, from which, of course, he escaped.

Roderick and Strap were now free from being detained as evidence. For two days they walked on, staying on the second night in a public-house of a very sorry appearance in a small village. At their entrance, the landlord, who seemed a venerable old man, with long grey hair, rose from a table placed by a large fire in a neat paved kitchen, and, with a cheerful countenance, accosted them with the words: “Salvete,pueri;ingredimini.” It was astonishing to hear a rustic landlord talking Latin, but Roderick, concealing his amazement, replied, “Dissolve frigus,ligna super foco large reponens.” He had no sooner pronounced the words than the innkeeper, running towards him, shook him by the hands, crying, “Fili mi dilectissime!unde venis?—a superis,ni fallor.” In short, finding them both read in the classics, he did not know how to testify his regard sufficiently; but ordered his daughter, a jolly, rosy-checked damsel, who was his sole domestic, to bring a bottle of hisquadrimum; repeating at the same time from Horace, “Deprome quadrimum Sabinâ,O Thaliarche,merum diota.” This was excellent ale of his own brewing, of which he told them he had always anamphora, four years old, for the use of himself and friends.

The innkeeper proved to be a schoolmaster who was obliged, by his income being so small, to supplement it by turning licensed victualler. He was very inquisitive about their affairs, and, while dinner was preparing, his talk abounded both with Latin tags and with good advice to the inexperienced against the deceits and wickedness of the world. They fared sumptuously onroast fowl and several bottles of quadrimum, going to bed congratulating themselves on the landlord’s good-humour. Strap was of opinion that they would be charged nothing for their lodging and entertainment. “Don’t you observe,” said he, “that he has conceived a particular affection for us; nay, even treated us with extraordinary fare, which, to be sure, we should not of ourselves have called for?”

Roderick was not so sanguine. Rising early in the morning, and having breakfasted with their host and his daughter on hasty-pudding and ale, they desired to know what there was to pay.

“Biddy will let you know, gentlemen,” said the old rascal of a tapster, “for I never mind these matters. Money-matters are beneath the concern of one who lives on the Horatian plan:Crescentem sequitur cura pecuniam.”

Meanwhile, Biddy, having consulted a slate that hung in a corner, gave the reckoning as eight shillings and sevenpence.

“Eight shillings and sevenpence!” cried Strap; “’tis impossible! You must be mistaken, young woman.”

“Reckon again, child,” said the father very deliberately; “perhaps you have miscounted.”

“No, indeed, father,” replied she. “I know my business better.”

Roderick demanded to know the particulars, on which the old man got up, muttering, “Ay, ay, let us see the particulars: that’s but reasonable”; and, taking pen, ink, and paper, wrote:

To bread and beer,

To a fowl and sausages,

To four bottles of quadrim,

To fire and tobacco,

To lodging,

To breakfast,

As he had not the appearance of a common publican, Roderick could not upbraid him as he deserved, simplyremarking that he was sure he had not learned from Horace to be an extortioner. To which the landlord replied that his only aim was to livecontentus parvo, and keep offimportuna pauperies.

Strap was indignant. He swore their host should either take one-third or go without; but Roderick, seeing the daughter go out and return with two stout fellows, with whom to frighten them, thought it politic to pay what was asked.

It was a doleful walk they had that day. In the evening they overtook the wagon, and it is here, and in the following scenes, that we get an excellent description of the cheap road travel of that era.

Strap mounted first into the wagon, but retired, dismayed, at a tremendous voice which issued from its depths, with the words, “Fire and fury! there shall no passengers come here.” These words came from Captain Weazel, one of the most singular characters to be found in Smollett’s pages.

Joey, the wagoner, was not afraid of the captain, and called out, with a sneer: “Waunds, coptain, whay woan’t you soofer the poor wagoneer to make a penny? Coom, coom, young man, get oop, get oop; never moind the coptain.”

“Blood and thunder! where’s my sword?” exclaimed the man of war, when the two eventually fell, rather than climbed, into the wagon’s dark recesses, and incidentally on to his stomach.

“What’s the matter, my dear?” asked a female voice.

“The matter?” replied the captain; “my guts are squeezed into a pancake by that Scotchman’s hump.” The “hump,” by the way, was poor Strap’s knapsack.

“It is our own fault,” resumed the feminine voice; “we may thank ourselves for all the inconveniences we meet with. I thank God I never travelled so before. I am sure, if my lady or Sir John were to know where we are, they would not sleep this nightfor vexation. I wish to God we had written for the chariot; I know we shall never be forgiven.”

“Come, come, my dear,” replied the captain, “it don’t signify fretting now; we shall laugh it over as a frolic; I hope you will not suffer in your health. I shall make my lord very merry with our adventures in the diligence.”

Travellers arriving at an Inn. After Rowlandson

The unsophisticated lads were greatly impressed by this talk. Not so the others. “Some people,” broke in another woman’s voice, “give themselves a great many needless airs; better folks than any here have travelled in wagons before now. Some of us have rode in coaches and chariots, with three footmen behind them, without making so much fuss about it. What then! we are now all on a footing; therefore let us be sociable and merry. What do you say, Isaac? Is not this a good motion, you doting rogue? Speak, old Cent. per cent.! What desperate debt are youthinking of? What mortgage are you planning? Well, Isaac, positively you shall never gain my favour till you turn over a new leaf, grow honest, and live like a gentleman. In the meantime, give me a kiss, you old fool.”

The words, accompanied by hearty smack, enlivened the person to whom they were addressed to such a degree, that he cried, in a transport, though with a faltering voice: “Ah, you baggage! on my credit you are a waggish girl—he, he, he!” This laugh introduced a fit of coughing which almost suffocated the poor usurer—for such they afterwards found was the profession of their fellow-traveller.

At their stopping-place for the night they had their first opportunity of viewing these passengers. First came a brisk, airy girl, about twenty years of age, with a silver-laced hat on her head instead of a cap, a blue stuff riding-suit, trimmed with silver, very much tarnished, and a whip in her hand. After her came, limping, an old man, with a worsted night-cap buttoned under his chin and a broad-brimmed hat slouched over it, an old rusty blue cloak tied about his neck, under which appeared a brown surtout that covered a threadbare coat and waistcoat, and a dirty flannel jacket. His eyes were hollow, bleared, and gummy; his face shrivelled into a thousand wrinkles, his gums destitute of teeth, his nose sharp and drooping, his chin peaked and prominent, so that when he mumped or spoke they approached one another like a pair of nut-crackers; he supported himself on an ivory-headed cane, and his whole figure was a just emblem of winter, famine, and avarice.

The captain was disclosed as a little thin creature, about the age of forty, with a long, withered visage very much resembling that of a baboon. He wore his own hair in a queue that reached to his rump, and on it a hat the size and cock of Antient Pistol’s. He was about five feet and three inches in height, sixteen inches of which went to his face and long scraggy neck; his thighs were about six inches inlength; his legs, resembling two spindles or drumsticks, two feet and a half; and his body the remainder; so that, on the whole, he appeared like a spider or grasshopper erect. His dress consisted of a frock of bear-skin, the skirts about half a foot long, a hussar waistcoat, scarlet breeches reaching half-way down his thighs, worsted stockings rolled up almost to his groin, and shoes with wooden heels at least two inches high; he carried a sword very nearly as long as himself in one hand, and with the other conducted his lady, who seemed to be a woman of his own age, still retaining some remains of good looks, but so ridiculously affected that any one who was not a novice in the world would easily have perceived in her deplorable vanity the second-hand airs of a lady’s woman.

This ridiculous couple were Captain and Mrs. Weazel. The travellers all assembled in the kitchen of the inn, where, according to the custom of the time, such impecunious wayfarers were entertained; but the captain desired a room for himself and his wife, so that they might sup by themselves, instead of in that communal fashion. The innkeeper, however, did not much relish this, but would have given way to the demand, providing the other passengers made no objection. Unhappily for the captain’s absurd dignity, the othersdidobject; Miss Jenny, the lady with the silver-trimmed hat, in particular, observing that “if Captain Weazel and his lady had a mind to sup by themselves, they might wait until the others should have done.” At this hint the captain put on a martial frown and looked very big, without speaking; while his yoke-fellow, with a disdainful toss of her nose, muttered something about “creature!” which Miss Jenny overhearing, stepped up to her, saying, “None of your names, good Mrs. Abigail. Creature! quotha—I’ll assure you—no such creature as you, neither—no quality-coupler.” Here the captain interposed, with a “D—n me, madam, what do you mean by that?”

“Sir, who are you?” replied Miss Jenny; “who made you a captain, you pitiful, trencher-scraping,pimping curler? The army is come to a fine pass when such fellows as you get commissions. What, I suppose you think I don’t know you? You and your helpmate are well met: a cast-off mistress and a bald valet-de-chambre are well yoked together.”

“Blood and wounds!” cried Weazel; “d’ye question the honour of my wife, madam? No man in England durst say so much—I would flay him, carbonado him! Fury and destruction! I would have his liver for my supper!” So saying, he drew his sword and flourished it, to the great terror of Strap; while Miss Jenny, snapping her fingers, told him she did not value his resentment that!

We will pass over the Rabelaisian adventures of the night, which, amusing enough, are too robust for these pages; and will proceed to the next day’s journey. Before they started, Weazel had proved himself the arrant coward and braggart which the reader has already perceived him to be; but, notwithstanding this exposure, he entertained the company in the wagon with accounts of his valour: how he had once knocked down a soldier who had made game of him; had tweaked a drawer by the nose who had found fault with his picking his teeth with a fork; and had, moreover, challenged a cheesemonger who had had the presumption to be his rival.

For five days they travelled in this manner. On the sixth day, when they were about to sit down to dinner, the innkeeper came and told them that three gentlemen, just arrived, had ordered the meal to be sent to their apartment, although told that it had been bespoken by the passengers in the wagon,—to which information they had replied: “The passengers in the wagon might be d—d; their betters must be served before them; they supposed it would be no hardship on such travellers to dine on bread and cheese for one day.”

This was a great disappointment to them all, and they laid their heads together to remedy it, Miss Jenny observing that Captain Weazel, being a soldier byprofession, ought to protect them. The captain adroitly excused himself by saying that he would not, for all the world, be known to have travelled in a wagon; swearing, at the same time, that, could he appear with honour, they should eat his sword sooner than his provision. On this declaration, Miss Jenny, snatching his weapon, drew it and ran immediately into the kitchen, where she threatened to put the cook to death if he did not immediately send the victuals into their room. The noise she made brought the three strangers down, one of whom no sooner perceived her than he cried, “Ha! Jenny Ramper! what brought thee hither?”

“My dear Jack Rattle,” she replied, running into his arms, “is it you? Then Weazel may go whistle for a dinner—I shall dine with you.”

They consented with joy to this proposal; and the others were on the point of being reduced to a very uncomfortable meal, when Joey, the wagoner, understanding the whole affair, entered the kitchen with a pitchfork in his hand, and swore he would be the death of any man who should pretend to seize the victuals prepared for the wagon. On this, the three strangers drew their swords, and, being joined by their servants, bloodshed seemed imminent; when the landlord, interposing, offered to part with his own dinner, for the sake of peace; which proposal was accepted and all ended happily.

When the journey was resumed in the afternoon, Roderick chose to walk some distance beside the wagoner, a merry, good-natured fellow, who informed him that Miss Jenny was a common girl of the town, who, falling in company with a recruiting officer who had carried her down in the stage-coach from London to Newcastle, was obliged to return, as her companion was now in prison for debt. Weazel had been a valet-de-chambre to my Lord Fizzle while he lived separate from his lady; but on their reconciliation she insisted on Weazel’s being turned off, as well as the woman who had lived with him: when his lordship,to get rid of them both with a good grace, proposed that Weazel should marry his mistress, when he would procure a commission in the army for him.

Roderick and the wagoner both had a profound contempt for Weazel, and resolved to put his courage to the test by alarming the passengers with the cry of “a highwayman” as soon as a horseman should appear. It was dusk when a man on horseback approached them. Joey gave the alarm, and a general consternation arose; Strap leaping out of the wagon and hiding himself behind a hedge; the usurer exclaiming dolefully and rustling about in the straw, as though hiding something; Mrs. Weazel wringing her hands and crying; and the captain pretending to snore.

This latter artifice did not succeed with Miss Jenny, who shook him by the shoulder and bawled out: “’Sdeath! captain, is this a time to snore when we are going to be robbed? Get up, for shame, and behave like a soldier and man of honour.”

Weazel pretended to be in a great passion for being disturbed, and swore he would have his nap out if all the highwaymen in England surrounded him. “What are you afraid of?” continued he; at the same time trembling with such agitation that the whole vehicle shook.

“Plague on your pitiful soul!” exclaimed Miss Jenny; “you are as arrant a poltroon as was ever drummed out of a regiment. Stop the wagon, Joey, and if I have rhetoric enough, the thief shall not only take your purse, but your skin also.”

By this time the horseman had come up with them, and proved to be a gentleman’s servant, well known to Joey, who told him the plot, and desired him to carry it on a little further, by going up to the wagon and questioning those within. Accordingly he approached, and in a terrible voice demanded, “Who have we got here?” Isaac replied, in a lamentable voice, “Here’s a poor, miserable sinner, who has got a small family to maintain, and nothing in the world but these fifteenshillings, which, if you rob me of, we must all starve together.”

“Who’s that sobbing in the corner?” continued the supposed highwayman.

“A poor, unfortunate woman,” answered Mrs. Weazel, “on whom, I beg you, for Christ’s sake, to have compassion.”

“Are you maid or wife?” said he.

“Wife, to my sorrow,” said she.

“Who, or what is your husband?” continued he.

“My husband,” continued Mrs. Weazel, “is an officer in the army, and was left sick at the last inn where we dined.”

“You must be mistaken, madam,” said he, “for I myself saw him get into the wagon this afternoon.” Here he laid hold of one of Weazel’s legs, and pulled him out from under his wife’s petticoats, where he had concealed himself. The trembling captain, detected in this inglorious situation, rubbed his eyes, and affecting to wake out of sleep, cried, “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter? The matter is not much,” answered the horseman; “I only called in to inquire after your health, and so adieu, most noble captain.” So saying, he clapped spurs to his horse, and was out of sight in a moment.

It was some time before Weazel could recollect himself; but at length, reassuming his big look, he said, “’Sdeath! why did he ride away before I had time to ask him how his lord and his lady do? Don’t you remember Tom, my dear?” addressing his wife.

“Yes,” replied she; “I think I do remember something of the fellow; but you know I seldom converse with people of his station.”

“Hey-day!” cried Joey; “do you know the young man, coptain?”

“Know him?” cried Weazel; “many a time has he filled a glass of Burgundy for me at my Lord Trippett’s table.”

“And what may his neame be, coptain?” said Joey.

“His name!—his name,” replied Weazel, “is Tom Rinser.”

“Wounds!” cried Joey, “a has changed his own neame then! for I’se lay any wager he was christened John Trotter.”

This raised a laugh against the captain, who seemed very much disconcerted; when Isaac broke silence and said, “It was no matter who or what he was, as he had not proved the robber they suspected. They ought to bless God for their narrow escape.”

“Bless God!” said Weazel, “for what? Had he been a highwayman I should have eaten his blood and body before he had robbed me or any one in this diligence.”

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