"Oho; every day?"

"Yes, every day. I take this post and drive back again at once. Why?"

Making the journey every day, he must have had a good many interesting
adventures in eleven years. On bright summer and gloomy autumn nights,
or in winter when a ferocious snowstorm whirled howling round the mail
cart, it must have been hard to avoid feeling frightened and uncanny. No
doubt more than once the horses had bolted, the mail cart had stuck in
the mud, they had been attacked by highwaymen, or had lost their way in
the blizzard....

"I can fancy what adventures you must have had in eleven years!" said
the student. "I expect it must be terrible driving?"

He said this and expected that the postman would tell him something,
but the latter preserved a sullen silence and retreated into his collar.
Meanwhile it began to get light. The sky changed colour imperceptibly;
it still seemed dark, but by now the horses and the driver and the road
could be seen. The crescent moon looked bigger and bigger, and the cloud
that stretched below it, shaped like a cannon in a gun-carriage, showed
a faint yellow on its lower edge. Soon the postman's face was visible.
It was wet with dew, grey and rigid as the face of a corpse. An
expression of dull, sullen anger was set upon it, as though the postman
were still in pain and still angry with the driver.

"Thank God it is daylight!" said the student, looking at his chilled and
angry face. "I am quite frozen. The nights are cold in September, but as
soon as the sun rises it isn't cold. Shall we soon reach the station?"