But Mr. Sandboys assured her that she must, in the flurry and the noise, have made some mistake, and that she need be under no apprehension, for the boxes, being all labelled “LONDON,” would be sure to have been placed in the London train. Mrs. Sandboys, in reply, however, begged to inform her husband, that the porter had declared that the other train was going to London; upon which Mr. Sandboys observed, that surely the station-master must know better than any one else, and it was from that person’s lips he had received the information upon which he had acted. In little more than three hours from the time of their leaving Workington, the railway-train came to a stoppage in front of an humble little station, along the platform of which a porter in a north country dialect, almost as strong as his corduroy suit, went crying, “Wha’s fwor Hobworn Heel?” “Here!” shouted Mr. Sandboys, wondering at the rapidity of the journey, as he let down the window of the carriage in which he was seated, and stared at the surrounding fields in astonishment at the extremely rural and uninhabited character of the said Holborn Hill. It was nothing at all like what it was when he was there, he said, half to himself; nor could he remember any place in the neighbourhood of London in any way similar to the desolate district at which he and his family were about to be deposited. “Haista ony looggidge?” inquired the porter. “Yes, indeed,” observed Mrs. Sandboys, sidling up to the porter; “three-an’-twenty packages—three-an’-twenty packages there owt to be, young man.” Mr. Cursty Sandboys kept twisting round about to try and discover some object that he could call to mind, and so assure himself of his presence in the Metropolis. At last, feeling convinced that, from the apparent absence of houses and people, it must be some suburban station, he ventured to ask the porter, as he and Mrs. Sandboys accompanied him forward to the luggage-van, how many _minutes’_ walk he called it to London. The porter stood still for a moment, looked in the face of Mr. Sandboys, and then, without saying a word, burst out laughing. Mr. Sandboys, far from pleased at the man’s manner, modified his question, and requested to know how many _miles_ he called it to London. “Two hundred an’ feafty, if ’t be an inch,” was the laconic reply. Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys both heard the answer, and stared transfixed, as if electrified. Then came the explanation. It was, as Mrs. Sandboys had dreaded, their boxes, trunks, and bags had gone in the direction of Holborn Hill, London, while they, poor unhappy mortals, had been carried some fifty miles out of their road to Holborn Hill, Cumberland.