London
and Manchester highway. A broad and stately thoroughfare it had been in
the old days of coaching, but now a close, fine turf invested it all,
save one narrow strip of Macadam in the middle. The mile-stones, which
had been showy, painted affairs of iron, were now deeply bitten and
blotched with rust. Two of them I had passed, without sight of house, or
of other traveller, save one belated drover, who was hurrying to the
fair at Ashbourne; as I neared the third, a great hulk of building
appeared upon my left, with a crowd of aspiring chimneys, from which
only one timid little pennant of smoke coiled into the harsh sky.

The gray, inhospitable-looking pile proved to be one of the old
coach-inns, which, with its score of vacant chambers and huge
stable-court, was left stranded upon the deserted highway of travel. It
stood a little space back from the road, so that a coach and four, or,
indeed, a half-dozen together, might have come up to the door-way in
dashing style. But it must have been many years since such a demand had
been made upon the resources of bustling landlord and of attendant
grooms and waiters. The doors were tightly closed; even the sign-board
creaked uneasily in the wind, and a rampant growth of ivy that clambered
over the porch so covered it with leaves and berries that I could not at
all make out its burden. I gave a sharp ring to the bell, and heard the
echo repeated from the deserted stable-court; there was the yelp of a
hound somewhere within, and presently a slatternly-dressed woman
received me, and, conducting me down a bare hall, showed me into a great
dingy parlor, where a murky fire was struggling in the grate. A score of
roistering travellers might have made the stately parlor gay; and I dare
say they did, in years gone; but now I had only for company their heavy
old arm-chairs, a few prints of "fast coaches" upon the wall, and a
superannuated greyhound, who seemed to scent the little meal I had
ordered, and presently stalked in and laid his thin nose, with an
appealing look, in my hands. His days of coursing--if he ever had
them--were fairly over; and I took a charitable pride in bestowing upon
him certain tough morsels of the rump-steak, garnished with
horse-radish, with which I was favored for dinner.

I had intended to push on to Buxton the same afternoon; but the
deliberate sprinkling of the morning by two o'clock had quickened into a
swift, pelting rain, the very counterpart of tha