being ours in law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, be
looked for from _us_. [Footnote: It is true that, according to the
law of the case as established by legal precedents, all carriages were
required to give way before royal equipages, and therefore before the
mail as one of them. But this only increased the danger, as being a
regulation very imperfectly made known, very unequally enforced, and
therefore often embarrassing the movements on both sides.] Our lamps,
still lighted, would give the impression of vigilance on our part. And
every creature that met us would rely upon _us_ for quartering.
[Footnote: "_Quartering_":--This is the technical word, and, I
presume, derived from the French _cartayer_, to evade a rut or any
obstacle.] All this, and if the separate links of the anticipation had
been a thousand times more, I saw, not discursively, or by effort, or
by succession, but by one flash of horrid simultaneous intuition.

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the evil which
_might_ be gathering ahead, ah! what a sullen mystery of fear, what
a sigh of woe, was that which stole upon the air, as again the far-off
sound of a wheel was heard! A whisper it was--a whisper from, perhaps,
four miles off--secretly announcing a ruin that, being foreseen, was
not the less inevitable; that, being known, was not therefore healed.
What could be done--who was it that could do it--to check the storm-
flight of these maniacal horses? Could I not seize the reins from the
grasp of the slumbering coachman? You, reader, think that it would have
been in _your_ power to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate
of yourself. But, from the way in which the coachman's hand was viced
between his upper and lower thigh, this was impossible. Easy was it?
See, then, that bronze equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the
bit in his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him for a minute,
if you please, and wash his mouth with water. Easy was it? Unhorse me,