Our box-seat passenger leaves us here. Although he has, all the way down, shown himself anxious to be intimate with the successive coachmen, and has paid pretty heavily for the privilege of occupying that seat of honour, it has been of no sporting advantage to him, for he is only a Cockney tradesman, who has never even driven a trap, let alone four-in-hand. So when each whip in turn asked him the questions, conventional among whips, “whether he had his driving-gloves on, and would like to take the ribbons for the next few miles,” he evaded the offer by “not being in form,” or not knowing the road, or something else equally annoying to the coachman, who, in not having an amateur of driving on the box, thereby missed the canonical tip of anything from seven shillings to half a sovereign which the handling of the reins for twenty miles or so was worth to the ordinary sportsman. Our new coachman, on our starting from Northallerton, keeps the seat beside him vacant. He says he has a passenger for it down the road. Tom Layfield, for that is the name of our present charioteer, works the “Wellington” up and down between this and Newcastle on alternate days, Ralph Soulsby being the coachman on the other. Tom Layfield is a very prim-looking, tall and spare man, tutor in coachmanship to many gentlemen on these last fifty-five miles; and it does not surprise some of us when, passing Great Smeaton, we are hailed by a very “down the road” looking young man, whose hat is cocked at a knowing angle, and whose entire get-up, from the gigantic mother-o’-pearl buttons on his light overcoat to the big scarf-pin in the semblance of a galloping coach and horses, proclaims “amateur coachman.” It is the young squire of Hornby Grange, on the right hand, we are told, who is anxious to graduate in coaching honours, and to be mentioned in the pages of the _Sporting Magazine_ by Nimrod, in company with Sir St. Vincent Cotton, the Brackenburys, and other distinguished ornaments of the bench. “‘Afternoon, squire,” says Layfield, as that young sportsman swings into the seat beside him; and they talk guardedly about anything and everything but coaches, until Layfield asks--as though it had just occurred to him--if he would not like to “put ’em along” for a few miles. He accepts, and is just about to take the reins over when the voice of a hitherto silent gentleman is heard from behind.