funeral and that "set-in" rainy evening.
As for the sister whose spirits fell with the fall of day, she was fast
lapsing into a melancholy condition of silence and utter "giving-up."

Rattling over the pavement of the long, straggling town,--plashing
along a few miles of level road,--struggling up hill,--rattling through
another pavemented town,--striking into the country again,--we came to
another long ascent. As we toiled to the top, a postilion, having the
care of five return horses, joined company with ours, the two men
walking up hill together, while their beasts paced slowly on, with
drooping heads and smoking sides. Now and then, when the road was less
steep, and levelled into trotting-ground, the postilions climbed to
their seats,--ours on his rightful box-seat, the other on an impromptu
one, which he made for himself upon a sack of corn slung beneath the
front windows of the _coupe_,--and while our horses fell into an easy
jog, we could see the return ones go on before at a swagging run, with
their loosened harness tossing and hanging from them as they took their
own course, now on one side of the way, now on the other, according to
the promptings of their unreined fancy.

Suddenly, at a turn of the road, we came upon an undistinguishable
something, which, when our eyes could pierce through and beyond the
immediate light afforded by our diligence-lamp, we discovered to be
another diligence leaning heavily over a ditch, while its conductor and
postilion were at their horses' heads, endeavoring to make them
extricate it from its awkward position. This, however, was a feat beyond
the poor beasts' strength; and our conductor, after a few "Sacramentos"
at this new delay, got down and ran to see what could be done to help
them out of the scrape. It had been occasioned partly by the
carelessness of the conductor, who, unlike ours, (for the latter was a
man of good sense and judgment, self-possessed, and perfectly attentive
to the duties of his office,) had neglected to light the diligence-lamp,
and partly by the obstinacy of a drunken postilion, who insisted on
keeping too close to the ditch side of the road, while he instinctively
avoided the precipice side. Nearly two mortal hours was our diligence
detained, during which time our cattle were taken from their traces and
harnessed to those of the half-overturned coach, in various attempts to
dislodge it. The first resulted in a further locking of the wheel
against a