s sometimes apparent to those who encountered him on
the road. Woe-betide any inefficient or sleepy driver whom Joe had to
pass on the road, for a heavy smack from his whip was often as
effectual a cure as the modern roundabout process of dragging the
sleepy teamster before the magistrates and extracting a few shillings
from his earnings!

At a recent dinner at Cambridge, Professor Humphry, who came to
Cambridge to commence what has been a brilliant career by a journey on
the "Star" coach, lightly hit off Joe Walton, the driver of the "Star,"
as a man who "used to swear like a trooper and go regularly to Church."

Joe Walton was also a man who could show off his powers on the box, and
did not like to be beaten. In 1827, finding, just as he was leaving
Buntingford with the "Star" coach, that the "Defiance" was cutting out
the pace in front of him, he put his "cattle" to it with a view to pass
the "Defiance;" but by one of the horses shying at the lamp of the
coach in front, Walton's coach was overturned and he and a passenger
were injured. Again in 1834, Joe overthrew the "Star" coach not far
from Royston, on the 2nd September, but it would almost seem that the
fault was as much in the "Star" as in Joe's daring style of driving,
for again on the 30th September it was overthrown on the Buntingford
and Royston road, when it was being driven by Sir Vincent Cotton.
Every inch a coachman, Joe Walton felt the bitter slight upon his high
calling, when at last, with the introduction of the railway, his
journeys were curtailed to the miserable make-shift of driving only as
far as Broxbourne to meet the iron horse, whose approach Walton would
hail with a memorable emphasis, and a more forcible than polite "Here
comes old Hell-in-harness!"

Other men on the North Road, though having less of Walton's rough grip
of their calling, were noted for their urbanity and general {150}
intelligence. A place of honour among these was well deserved by
Valentine Carter, the son of a Hertford coach-proprietor, the driver of
the "Rocket," already referred to, and of the "Royston Coach" from
Cambridge to Ware, as a connection with the Great Eastern Railway
(1845-50), and in after life known as the genial landlord of the George
Hotel, Buntingford. At the time of his death he had reached his 85th
year, and when his remains were interred in the Layston Churchyard only
a few years ago it was well said of him that "a more upright, truthful,
and