and never left off snowing.

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns
and villages, but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of
birds. At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst
from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and
moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state. I found that
we were going to change.

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as
white as King Lear's in a single minute, "What Inn is this?"

"The Holly-Tree, sir," said he.

"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard and
coachman, "that I must stop here."

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post-boy, and
all the stable authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-
eyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go on.
The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her through
it,"--meaning by Her the coach,--"if so be as George would stand by him."
George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by
him. So the helpers were already getting the horses out.

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement
without preparation. Indeed, but for the way to the announcement being
smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful
man, I should have had the confidence to make it. As it was, it received
the approval even of the guard and coachman. Therefore, with many