He had availed himself of the interval to swallow a snack and a glass of brandy and water, and he was the warmer for the exercise and in better spirits; pluming himself a little, too, on the resolution which had plucked him from his difficulty at the Stone Bridge. But he had lost the greater part of an hour, and the clocks at Coventry were close on three when he rattled through the narrow, twisting streets of that city. Here, early as was the hour, he caught rumors of the panic, and hints were dropped by the night-men in the inn yard—in sly reply, perhaps, to his adjurations to hasten—of desperate men hurrying to and fro, and buying with gold the speed which meant fortune and life to them. Something was said of a banker who had shot himself at Northampton—or was it Nottingham?—of London runners who had passed through in pursuit of a defaulter; of a bank that had stopped, “up the road.” “And there’ll be more before all’s over,” said his informant darkly. “But it’s well to be them while it lasts! They’ve money to burn, it seems.” Clement wondered if this was an allusion to the crown piece that he had offered. At any rate the ill-omened tale haunted him as he left the city behind him, and, after passing under the Cross on Knightlow Hill, and over the Black Heath about Dunsmoor, committed himself to the long, monotonous stretch of road that, unbroken by any striking features, and regularly dotted with small towns that hardly rose above villages, extended dull mile after dull mile to London. The rumble of the chaise and the exertions he had made began to incline him to sleep, but the cold bit into his bones, his feet were growing numb, and as often as he nodded off in his corner he slid down and awoke himself. Sleet, too, was beginning to fall, and the ill-fitting windows leaked, and it was a very morose person who turned out in the rain at Dunchurch.