Deprived of its best passengers, the exchequer of our typical “Swallow” began to decline. The stalwarts, whose love for the road was superior to economy of time and money, were faithful, but they were not numerous enough, and did not travel sufficiently often, for the old style of that fast post-coach to be maintained, so it was reduced from four horses to three. In coaching parlance, it ran “pickaxe,” or “unicorn.” No connoisseur in coaching matters would condescend to travel as a regular thing by a three-horse coach, and so those supporters were alienated, and, against their will, driven to the railway; and the “Swallow,” badly winged, carried only frightened old women who looked upon steam-engines as wild beasts. As they died away, no one took their places, and the old concern became a pair-horse coach. The coachman had seen the change coming, and declared he would never be brought so low as to drive two horses. He had said the same thing when it was proposed to have three. “Drive unicorn!” he had said: “never!” But he did, and he drove pair-horse as well, when the time came. It was better to do so than to lose his place and face starvation. By this time the iron had entered the soul of our poor old friend, and had rusted there. He who had been so smart and gay, with song and joke and always good-humoured, suffered, like the coach, a strange and pitiful metamorphosis. The stringency of the times had thinned the establishment, and in the absence of ostlers and stablemen he put in the horses himself, badly groomed, and the harness dirty. No one washed or cleaned the coach, and it ran with the mud and dirt of many journeys encrusted on its sides. His coat grew seedy, his gloves soiled. Instead of the silver-mounted whip he had wielded for years, he used one of common make. The old one, he said, had gone to be repaired, but somehow or another the job was never completed. At any rate, no one ever saw the old whip again. At the same time his smart white hat disappeared and was replaced by a black one: observant people, however, perceived that it was the identical hat, disguised by process of dyeing. He could sink no deeper, you think. But he could, and did. Even the short journey to which the old “Swallow” had in course of time been reduced by railway extensions came at last to an end; and then he drove the “Railway Bus” to and from the station, with one horse. His temper, once so high-mettled, had by now grown uncertain. He was like an April day--stormy, dull, gloomy, and with fitful gleams of sunshine, all in turn. No one knew quite how to take him, and every one at last left him very much to himself. He was never a favourite with the “commercial gentlemen,” who were now his most frequent passengers, for he had always in the old days looked down upon any one under the rank of a county gentleman, and could by no means rid himself of that ancient attitude of mind. Indeed, he lived in the past, and when he could be