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Life stretched before him alluring and various as the open road; and his pulses danced to the tune of the postillion's whip as the carriage rattled out of the gates.

As for mothers and grandmothers, those good folks are married over again in the marriage of their young ones; and their souls attire themselves in the laces and muslins of twenty-forty years ago; the postillion's white ribbons bloom again, and they flutter into the postchaise, and drive away.

The quick clattering of the wheels, the sharp crack of the postillion's whip, or the still sharper tone of his "gee hup," showed me we were going at a tremendous pace, had I not even had the experience afforded by the frequent visits my head paid to the roof of the chaise, so often as we bounded over a stone, or splashed through a hollow.

They seemed to the boy to be whispering together and muttering. Now this was absurd; for what with the blare of the postillion's horn, the clatter of hoofs, the jolting and rumbling of wheels, the rattle of glass, our travellers had all the noise to themselves or all but the voice of the gale now rising again for an afterclap and snoring at the street corners. Yet his instinct was right.

The conscious attempt to make it as good as a rogue novel on its own ground caused some of the chief faults of the book, the excess of recognitions and re-appearances, the postillion's story, and the visits of the Man in Black.

The quick clattering of the wheels, the sharp crack of the postillion's whip, or the still sharper tone of his "gee hup," showed me we were going at a tremendous pace, had I not even had the experience afforded by the frequent visits my head paid to the roof of the chaise, so often as we bounded over a stone, or splashed through a hollow.

One spring morning, ten years later, I was standing outside the "Woolpack," drinking my mug of beer with a tall recruiting sergeant, and discussing the similarity of our professions, when a post-chaise appeared at the head of the street, and a bobbing red postillion's jacket, and a pair of greys that came down the hill with a rattle, and drew up at the inn-door.

Out of this drowned-looking wretch the last spark of life was taken by the sum the postillion ventured to name; and if paying your utmost farthing without examination of the charge, and cheerfully stepping out to walk fifty miles, penniless, constituted a postillion's gentleman, Evan would have passed the test.

I had ordered a saddle horse to be ready for me in the morning. We took a hasty cup of coffee and bade each other mutual farewells. I placed Marcoline in the carriage, gave her a last embrace, and waited for the crack of the postillion's whip to gallop back to Lyons. I tore along like a madman, for I felt as if I should like to send the horse to the ground and kill myself.

Evan then said: 'Good night, my man. I won't wish, for your sake, that we changed places. You would have to walk fifty miles to be in time for your father's funeral. Good night. 'You are it to look at! was the postillion's comment, seeing my gentleman depart with great strides.