hange horses. In
less than two minutes they started again, and Valentine, who then felt
ready for anything, began to think seriously of the exercise of his
power as a ventriloquist.

"Whit, whit!" said Tooler, the coachman, between a whisper and a
whistle, as the fresh horses galloped up the hill.

"Stop! hoa!" cried Valentine, assuming a voice, the sound of which
appeared to have travelled some distance.

"You have left some one behind," observed a gentleman in black, who
had secured the box seat.

"Oh, let un run a bit!" said Tooler. "Whit! I'll give un a winder up
this little hill, and teach un to be up in time in future. If we was
to wait for every passenger as chooses to lag behind, we shouldn't git
over the ground in a fortnit."

"Hoa! stop! stop! stop!" reiterated Valentine, in the voice of a man
pretty well out of breath.

Tooler, without deigning to look behind, retickled the haunches of his
leaders, and gleefully chuckled at the idea of _how_ he was making a
passenger sweat.

The voice was heard no more, and Tooler, on reaching the top of the
hill, pulled up and looked round, but could see no man running.

"Where is he?" inquired Tooler.

"In the ditch!" replied Valentine, throwing his voice behind.

"In the ditch!" exclaimed Tooler. "Blarm me, whereabouts?"

"There," said Valentine.

"Bless my soul!" cried the gentleman in black, who was an exceedingly
nervous village clergyman. "The poor person no doubt is fallen down
in an absolute state of exhaustion. How very, very wrong of you,
coachman, not to stop!"

Tooler, apprehensive of some serious occurrence, got down with
the view of dragging the exhausted passenger out of the ditch; but
although he ran several hundred yards down the hill, no such person of
course could be found.

"Who saw un?" shouted Tooler, as he panted up the hill again.

"I saw nothing," said a passenger behind, "but a boy jumping over the
hedge."

Tooler looked at his way-bill, counted the passengers, found them all
right, and, remounting the box, got the horses again into a gallop, in
the perfect conviction that some villanous young scarecrow had raised
the false alarm.

"Whit! blarm them 'ere boys!" said Tooler, "'stead o' mindin' their
crows, they are allus up to suffen. I only wish I had un here, I'd pay
_on_ to their blarmed bodies; if I would n't--" At this interesting
moment, and as if to give a practical illustration of what he would
have done in the case, h