gh on time. So it came to pass that, in spite of
rising gale and fiercer driving snow, in spite of earnest remonstrance
from innkeepers and spectators, with "toot-toot" of horn away into the
white smother, spectral-like, glided the silent coach. A mile from the
inn she was blocked by a huge drift. That safely won through, a couple
of miles farther she plodded on, slowly and ever more slow; and finally,
in a mighty wreath, stuck fast; "all the King's horses" might not have
brought her through that. MacGeorge was urged to turn now, to make the
best of a bad business and to go back to Moffat. The delay was
unavoidable; no one could cast blame on him, for the worst part of the
road was yet to come, and no power on earth could get the mails through
that. But no! It was his duty to go on, and go he would.

The horses were taken out of the coach. Some were sent back to Moffat in
charge of the lads who rode the extra tracers used in snowy weather for
the few miles of heavy collar-work out of Moffat; of the rest, loaded
with the mail-bags, MacGeorge led one, Goodfellow, the coachman,
another; and the two set off for Tweedshaws, accompanied by a man named
Marchbanks, the Moffat roadman, who had been a passenger on the coach.
It was but four miles to Tweedshaws, yet before they had struggled
through half the distance the horses had come to a standstill, utterly
blown and exhausted; nothing could get them to stir forward, or longer
to face the drift. Marchbanks suggested that now at length they might
reasonably turn and fight their way back. Goodfellow hesitated.

"What say ye, Jamie?" he asked of MacGeorge.

"Come ye or bide ye, I go on," answered the stern old soldier. "I can
carry the bags mysel'."

"Then that settles the maitter. If ye gang, I gang."

So the horses were turned adrift to find their own way home, and the two
men went off into the mirk, carrying the bags; whilst Marchbanks, on
their urgent advice, turned to force his arduous way back to Moffat.

Snow still fell in the morning, but the worst of the storm seemed over
when Marchbanks again started to try for Tweedshaws to ascertain if
MacGeorge and Goodfellow had won their way through. The country was one
vast drift; the snow-posts by the roadside, where not altogether buried
or so plastered with the driving snow on their weather side as to be
invisible, pushed their black heads through the universal ghostly
shroud; where the road had been, the abandoned coach i