I remained on the Bristol and Portsmouth Mail for ten months, when I was transferred to the London, Yeovil and Exeter Mail. We had a very sad accident with that Mail once between Whitchurch and Andover. The coach used to start from Piccadilly, where all the passengers and baggage were taken up. On this occasion the Mail was brought up to Piccadilly by me in a cart as usual, and we were off in a few seconds. My coachman had been having a drinking bout with a friend that day, and when we had got a few miles on the road I discovered that coachee was the worse for drink, and that it was not safe for him to drive; so when we reached Hounslow I made him get off the box seat. After securing the Mail bags, and putting the coachman in my seat and strapping him in, I took the ribbons. At Whitchurch the coachman unstrapped himself and exchanged places with me, but we had not proceeded more than three miles when, the coach giving a jolt over a heap of stones, he fell between the horses, and the wheels of the coach ran over him, killing him on the spot. The horses, having no driver, broke into full gallop, so, as there was no front passenger, I climbed over the roof to gather up the reins, when I found that they had fallen among the horses’ feet and were trodden to bits. Returning over the roof I missed my hold and fell into the road, but fortunately with no worse result than some bruises and a sprained ankle. The horses kept on until they reached Andover, where they pulled up at the usual spot. Strange to say, no damage was done to the coach, though there was a very steep hill to go down. The old Exeter Mail, running from London to Exeter, which came behind our coach, found the body of my coachman on the road, and, a mile further on, picked me up. Notwithstanding the excitement I had undergone, and the bruising I had sustained, I took my Mails on to Exeter and returned the next day for the inquest. Accidents of one kind and another were not uncommon on the road, though some, of course, made more impression on me than others. I remember that when bowling along towards Andover one very dark night I noticed something lying at the side of the road. The coachman pulled up, and I found that it was a man with his head smashed to pieces. I wrapped the poor fellow’s remains in my shawl, and took them on to Andover, returning from Exeter on the following day to be on the inquest. It turned out that the man had been riding on the shaft of a lime waggon, and falling off—probably while asleep—the wheels had gone over his head. On another occasion, in a different part of the country, when my coach was nearing Cheltenham, our leaders knocked down a man who was walking along the road from Cheltenham Fair. The front part of his head was crushed by the horse’s hoofs, and the wheels of the coach went over him.