Snowstorms produced curious travelling experiences. It was this great occasion that effectually blocked all the up night coaches for two days at Dunchurch, on the Holyhead Road, and so succeeded in bringing together a party not unlike those weatherbound travellers who in Dickens’ Christmas stories gather round the hearth, and, comforting themselves with many jorums of punch, tell dramatic stories. One party crowded the “Dun Cow,” another the “Green Man.” Among the coaches were the Manchester “Beehive” and the “Red Rover.” The first morning of their enforced leisure they--coachmen, guards and passengers--made up a poaching party, with two guns among sixteen of them. Jack Goodwin, guard of the “Beehive,” was the only fortunate sportsman, and shot a hare. In the evening a dancing party was held at the “Dun Cow” at the suggestion of the landlord, who invited some friends, and the next morning Goodwin turned wandering minstrel, taking with him a chosen few to help in chorus. Wandering along the Rugby Road, they were entertained at the farmhouses with elderberry wine and pork pies. Another pleasant evening, and they were off the next morning for London. Floods were infinitely more dangerous than snowstorms, and the Great North Road, between Newark-on-Trent and Scarthing Moor, was particularly subject to them, the Trent often, and on the very slightest provocation of rain, flooding many miles of surrounding country. It was here, and on these occasions, that the outsides had the better bargain of the two classes of travelling, for they kept their seats without fear of being drowned, while the insides went in constant terror of a watery death, and often only escaped it by the pitiful expedient of standing on their seats and so--keeping the doubled-up attitude this necessity and the lowness of the roof imperatively demanded--remaining until the levels were passed and the dry uplands reached again. [Illustration: WINTER: GOING NORTH. _After H. Alken._ ]