By
a thousand indications I could judge that I was again drawing near
to Scotland. I saw it written in the face of the hills, in the
growth of the trees, and in the glint of the waterbrooks that kept
the high-road company. It might have occurred to me, also, that I
was, at the same time, approaching a place of some fame in Britain-
-Gretna Green. Over these same leagues of road--which Rowley and I
now traversed in the claret-coloured chaise, to the note of the
flageolet and the French lesson--how many pairs of lovers had gone
bowling northwards to the music of sixteen scampering horseshoes;
and how many irate persons, parents, uncles, guardians, evicted
rivals, had come tearing after, clapping the frequent red face to
the chaise-window, lavishly shedding their gold about the post-
houses, sedulously loading and re-loading, as they went, their
avenging pistols! But I doubt if I had thought of it at all,
before a wayside hazard swept me into the thick of an adventure of
this nature; and I found myself playing providence with other
people's lives, to my own admiration at the moment--and
subsequently to my own brief but passionate regret.
At rather an ugly corner of an uphill reach I came on the wreck of
a chaise lying on one side in the ditch, a man and a woman in
animated discourse in the middle of the road, and the two
postillions, each with his pair of horses, looking on and laughing
from the saddle.
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