Caxton, a busy thoroughfare village, where the great “George” inn does a very large business, is passed, and soon, along this flattest of flat roads, that grim relic, Caxton Gibbet, rises dark and forbidding against the translucent evening sky. Does the troubled ghost of young Gatward, gibbeted here eighty years ago for robbing the mail on this lonely spot, ever revisit the scene, we wonder? The wise, inscrutable stars hang trembling in the sky, and the sickle moon is shining softly, as, having passed Papworth St. Everard, we drop gently down through Godmanchester and draw up in front of the “George” at Huntingdon, 58½ miles from London, at ten o’clock. We take the opportunity afforded by the change of filling our pocket-flasks with some rich brown brandy of the right sort, and invest in some of those very special veal-and-ham sandwiches for which good Mrs. Ekin has been famous these years past. Our coachman “leaves us here,” and we tip him eighteenpence apiece when he comes round to inform us of the fact. The new coachman, after some little conversation with the outgoing incumbent of the bench, in which we catch the remark made to the newcomer that some articles or some persons are “a pretty fair lot, taking ’em all round”--a criticism that evidently sizes us up for the benefit of his _confrère_--climbs into his seat, and giving us all a comprehensive and impartial glance, settles himself down comfortably. “All right, Tom?” he asks the guard over his shoulder. “Yes,” answers that functionary. “Then give ’em their heads, Bill,” he says to the ostler; and away we go into the moonlit night at a steady pace. The box-seat passenger, who very successfully kept the original coachman in conversation nearly all the way from London to Huntingdon, does not seem to quite hit it off with our new whip, who is inclined to be huffish, or, at the least of it, given to silence and keeping his own counsel. “Have a weed, coachman?” he asks, after some ineffectual attempts to get more than a grunt out of him. “Don’t mind if I do,” is the ungracious reply, and he takes the proffered cigar and--puts it into some pocket somewhere beneath the voluminous capes of his greatcoat. After this, silence reigns supreme. For ourselves, we have chatted throughout the day, and now begin to feel--not sleepy, but meditative.