Although torrents of rain had been falling and the night was pitch dark, all went well with the mail until nearing the Lugg Bridge, near Hereford, where the little river Lugg, rushing furiously in spate to join the Wye, had undermined the masonry. No sooner did the horses place their weight upon it than the arch gave way, and the coachman, Couldery the guard, and the one passenger, were precipitated into the torrent and swept away for more than a mile down stream. It was midnight when the accident happened, and until daybreak the three, at separate points, clung to rocks and branches, from which they were then rescued by search-parties. The coachman and guard recovered from the exposure, but the passenger died. Charles Ward, that fine old coachman, who kept on the road in Cornwall for many years after coaching had ceased over the rest of England, tells amusingly of the happening that befell the cross-country Bath and Devonport Mail, in some year unspecified. It might have been a most serious accident, but fortunately ended happily. The coach was due to arrive at Devonport at eleven o’clock at night. On this particular occasion all the outside passengers, except a Mrs. Cox, an “immense woman,” who kept a fish-stall in Devonport Market, had been set down at Yealmpton, where the coachman and guard usually had their last drain. They went, as usual, into the inn, and very considerately sent out to Mrs. Cox a glass of “something warm,” it being a very cold night. The servant-girl who took out that cheering glass was not able to reach up to the roof, and so the ostler, who was holding the horses’ heads, very imprudently left them, to do the polite, when the animals, hearing some one getting on the coach, and thinking (for coach-horses did actually do something like it) that it was the coachman, started off, and trotted at their ordinary speed the whole seven miles to the door of the “King’s Arms” at Plymouth, where they were in the habit of stopping to discharge some of the coach-freight. On their way they had to cross the Laira Bridge and through the toll-bar, and did so, keeping clear of everything on the road in as workmanlike a manner as though the skilfullest of whips was directing their course. Mrs. Cox, however, was terrified. Afraid to scream lest she should startle the horses, she had to content herself with gesticulating and trying to attract the attention of the people met or passed on the road. When the horses drew up in an orderly fashion at the “King’s Arms,” and the ostlers came bustling out to attend to their duties, they were astonished to see no one but the affrighted Mrs. Cox on the outside, and two inside passengers, who had been in total ignorance of what was happening. The coachman and guard, in a very alarmed state, soon came up in a post-chaise. It took many quarterns of gin to steady the nerves of the proprietress of the fish-stall, and the incident became the chief landmark of her career.