Here was antique splendour. The harness and trappings were scarlet,
and blazing with gold. The horses were huge, and snow white, with
great manes, that as they tossed and shook them in the air, seemed to
stream and float sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, like so much
smoke--their tails were long, and tied up in bows of broad scarlet and
gold ribbon. The coach itself was glowing with colours, gilded and
emblazoned. There were footmen in gay liveries, and three-cocked hats,
like the coachman's; but he had a great wig, like a judge's, and their
hair was frizzed out and powdered, and a long thick "pigtail," with a
bow to it, hung down the back of each.

All these servants were diminutive, and ludicrously out of proportion
with the enormous horses of the equipage, and had sharp, sallow
features, and small, restless fiery eyes, and faces of cunning and
malice that chilled the children. The little coachman was scowling and
showing his white fangs under his cocked hat, and his little blazing
beads of eyes were quivering with fury in their sockets as he whirled
his whip round and round over their heads, till the lash of it looked
like a streak of fire in the evening sun, and sounded like the cry of
a legion of "fillapoueeks" in the air.

"Stop the princess on the highway!" cried the coachman, in a piercing
treble.

"Stop the princess on the highway!" piped each footman in turn,
scowling over his shoulder down on the children, and grinding his keen
teeth.

The children were so frightened they could only gape and turn white in