Dan Sleigh was a specimen of the old-fashioned horsekeeper, a race which has now become obsolete. He had lived with Mrs. Nelson, who was one of the largest coach proprietors of the period, for thirty-nine years, always having charge of a double team. He rarely conversed with anybody but “his ’osses,” with whom, between the h—i—ss—e—s which accompanied every action of his life, he carried on a sotto voce conversation, asking questions as to what they did with them, at the other end, and agreeing with himself as to the iniquitous system of taking them out of the coach and riding them into the horsepond, then leaving them to dry whilst Ben Ball—the other horsekeeper—went round to the tap to have half-a-pint of beer. O tempora! O mores!
Many of his old friends had fallen victims to this cruel treatment. A recent case had occurred in the death of old Blind Sal, who had worked over the same ground for thirteen years, and never required a hand put to her, either from the stable to the coach or from the coach to the stable. She caught a chill in the horsepond, and died of acute inflammation.
When I interrupted old Dan he was just “hissing” out his final touches, and beginning to sponge the dirt off his harness. He recognised me with a smile—a shilling smile—and the following dialogue ensued.
Daniel Sleigh was a man who, to use his own words, “kep’ ’isself to ’isself.” He never went to “no public ’ouses, nor yet no churches.” He had never altered his time of getting up or going to bed for forty years; and, except when he lay in the “horsepital” six weeks, through a kick from a young horse, he had never been beyond the smithy for eleven years. In any other grade of life he would have been a “recluse.”
His personal appearance was not engaging—high cheek-bones, small gray sunken eyes, a large mouth, and long wiry neck, with broad shoulders, a little curved by the anno domini; clothed always in one style, namely, a long plush vest, which might have been blue once; a pair of drab nethers, well veneered with blacking and harness paste; from which was suspended a pair of black leather leggings, meeting some thin ankle-jacks. This, with a no-coloured string, which had once been a necktie, and a catskin cap, completed his attire. My attention had been attracted to an old hound—a fox-hound—reclining at full length on his side on the pathway leading to the stables, his slumbers broken by sudden jerks of his body and twitches of his limbs, accompanied by almost inaudible little screams; leading me to suppose that this poor old hound was reviewing in his slumbers some of the scenes of his early life, and dreaming of bygone November days when he had taken part in the pursuit of some good straight-necked fox in the Oakley or the Grafton country.
“What is that hound?” I asked. “He looks like one of poor Old Lal’s team.”
“Ah, that’s the last on ’em. They are all gone now but poor old Trojan, and he gets very weak and old.”
When I noticed him he slowly rose, and sauntered across the yard towards a large open coachhouse, used as a receptacle for hearses and mourning-coaches. He did not respond to my advances, except by standing still and looking me in the face with the most wobegone expression possible, his deep brow almost concealing his red eyes. He was very poor, his long staring coat barely covering his protruding hips and ribs. There he stood, motionless, as if listening intently to the sad tale Daniel Sleigh was graphically relating.
“And what has become of poor Old Lal?” I asked.