51�Թ�

Here we were startled by the familiar sound of the coach whip, and saw a stage-driver flogging in the severest style four heated, panting, and overpowered horses, coming in with a heavily laden coach; the lash was perpetually laid on; even the keenest at the draught were flogged, that they might pull on the rest, and the less powerful were flogged to keep up with them.

Cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf, posh and ice in the river, half-frozen mud in the streets, A gray discouraged sky overhead, the short, last daylight of December, A hearse and stages, the funeral of an old Broadway stage-driver, the cortege mostly drivers.

"We'll take no chances, though," declared the stage-driver.

When he arrived in that strange village, his money was all gone and he lacked fifteen cents of having enough to pay the stage-driver.

He kep' just behind the feller," the stage-driver told Van Horn at the Tavern afterwards—"just behind him, like as if he was afraid the feller'd run away from him.