Mail-coaches were then the quickest conveyances. The northern mail was supposed to travel at the rate of eight miles an hour, including stoppages; and on the young man was hurried from the capital towards Northumberland, squeezed up in a hot summer night with an enormously fat woman and a tolerably stout man. The distance he had to go was about three hundred and twenty miles, and the town where he was to get out was Belford, between which place and Wooler the mansion of the Earl of Milford was situated. Farther he knew nothing of his road, except that at Belford he should be able to obtain information. Night set in soon after he left London, and both his companions were speedily asleep; for they were of the taciturn breed, on which even the aspect of youth has no more effect than beauty upon a stone. They snored hard and sonorously, especially the man, woke up for a moment into half-slumbering consciousness while the horses were being changed, and then were as sound asleep as ever. Wherever provisions were to be had, indeed, the lady roused herself, and proceeded to the business of the hour with marvellous activity, considering her age and weight; but at most other times she was as silent as her companion, who seemed to consider that locomotion was the proper and natural stimulus to slumber.
The forty weary hours passed at length, very few words having been spoken; but the mail was not yet at Belford--indeed, it never was--and two more hours went by before the small town appeared. It was at that time very dull and dirty; and as he looked up at the sign of the "Old Bell," Henry felt the place had a sort of desolate aspect, which made the prospect of sleeping at Milford Castle very pleasant in comparison.
The landlord of the "Bell," however, had no intention of suffering him to depart so easily. Milford Castle, he assured him, was full sixteen miles to the westward; and when Henry replied that the distance did not matter, as he must go on that night, having business to transact, the worthy host discovered that all his horses were out, and would not return till two or three in the morning.
As there was no other house in the town which kept post-horses, Henry was obliged to be content, and ordering a light dinner, he determined to sit and doze by the fire till the horses returned. The landlord so contrived, however--what between the necessity of giving food and rest to cattle which were all the time in the stable, and the late hour at which they were reported to return from a journey they had never made--that the young traveller was obliged to remain all night and breakfast the next morning at the "Bell."
Still, little more than eight-and-forty hours had passed since he had left London when once more he was on the way again. He had been allowed six whole days to complete his task; and the coming time, to the mind of youth, is always long in proportion to the shortness of the past.
It was a bright morning when he set out again for Milford, and all looked gay and hopeful; but fatigue and impatience had done much to diminish confidence, and the way seemed interminably long, the postboy preternaturally slow. Half-way there, it was found necessary to stop and feed the horses; and although Henry endeavoured, with a look of importance, to enforce the necessity of great speed, he was too young for his commands to be received with any great deference.
At about nine o'clock, however, a little village between bare, high banks presented itself--a mere hamlet, with a chandler's shop and a public-house--and shortly after were seen large gates and a lodge. The gates were opened by an old woman, who seemed, like the few stunted trees around, to have been bent by the prevailing wind; but a drive of two miles through the large, wild park was still before the young traveller. The scenery certainly improved, and gave him some objects of interest to look at; the trees became large and fine; pleasantly-varied hill and dale succeeded to round-backed rises; and occasional glimpses of an old grey mansion-house caught his eyes as he strained his sight out of the front windows of the chaise. The house disappeared again in thick plantations as he got nearer, and it was with surprise that he found himself suddenly driving up to the doors. He was too much accustomed to good society to feel anything like shyness, but yet he was somewhat anxious; and, advancing his head as near the window as possible without putting it out, he looked up over the house with some curiosity as the postboy rang the great bell.
To his consternation he perceived that all the windows were closed, and bidding the driver open the door, he jumped out.
No one answered the summons of the bell, and he rang it again after waiting several minutes. It required a third application to bring any one out, and then it was merely a slipshod country servant, who came round from the back of the house without condescending to open the great doors.
Her first salutation was, "What d'ye want, man? Don't you know that the old lord is dead, and they are gone to take the corpse over to Wales, to the place where they're all booried?"