"Not possible! why not?"
"The snow, my lord."
"Snow! nonsense!—as if it never snowed before! Tell them who I am. I say, you fellows, put horses to,—the distance is nothing;—go on;" and Lord John pulled up the glass, threw himself again into his corner, and the landlord, knowing that though they would inevitably be obliged to return, the horses must be paid for, tipped the postilion the wink, and on they went.
But not to Dover! Slowly they proceeded: now one wheel was up in the air, and then the other. Lord John was himself startled when he saw the deep drifts through which they waded; and when at last they stopped at a low miserable hovel by the road-side, he no longer urged the possibility of proceeding farther.
"We must return to Canterbury."
"Impossible, my lord: after we passed a part of the road which had been cut between two hills, an immense mass of snow fell, and blocked it up. It is a mercy it did not fall upon us;—we had a narrow escape."
"We can't stay here," said Lord John, looking at the wretched hut before him.
"We must stay here," said one of the drivers.
"Why, I haven't got my things!—what can I do, Faddle, without my things? I haven't even a clean cambric handkerchief, nor a tooth-brush!"
It was too true: it had appeared so easy to have his "things" unpacked and placed on his dressing-table the moment he arrived at Dover, that literally nothing had been provided. Intense cold soon drove Lord John into the hut; from which, however, his first impulse was to emerge again, so execrable were the fumes of bad tobacco, and so odious the group which preoccupied the low chamber.