Boutigo's van--officially styled _The Vivid_--had just issued from the Packhorse Yard, Tregarrick, a leisurely three-quarters of an hour behind its advertised time, and was scaling the acclivity of St. Fimbar's Street in a series of short tacks. Now and then it halted to take up a passenger or a parcel; and on these occasions Boutigo produced a couple of big stones from his hip-pockets and slipped them under the hind-wheels, while we, his patrons within the van, tilted at an angle of 15° upon cushions of American cloth, sought for new centres of gravity, and earnestly desired the summit. It was on the summit, where the considerate Boutigo gave us a minute's pause to rearrange ourselves and our belongings, that we slipped into easy and general talk. An old countryman, with an empty poultry-basket on his knees, and a battered top-hat on the back of his head, gave us the cue. "When Boutigo's father had the accident--that was back in 'fifty-six,' and it broke his leg an' two ribs--the van started from close 'pon the knap o' the hill here, and scat itself to bits against the bridge at the foot just two and a half minutes after." I suggested that this was not very fast for a runaway horse. "I dessay not," he answered; "but 'twas pretty spry for a van slippin' _backwards_, and the old mare diggin' her toes in all the way to hold it up." One or two of the passengers grinned at my expense, and the old man pursued-- "But if you want to know how fast a hoss _can_ get down St. Fimbar's hill, I reckon you've lost your chance by not axin' Dan'l Best, that died up to the 'Sylum twelve years since; though, poor soul, he'd but one answer for every question from his seven-an'-twentieth year to his end, an' that was 'One, two, three, four, five, sis, seven." "Ah, the poor body! his was a wisht case," a woman observed from the corner furthest from the door. "Ay, Selina, and fast forgotten, like all the doin's and sufferin's of the men of old time." He reached a hand round his basket, and touching me on the knee, pointed back on Tregarrick. "There's a wall," he said, and I saw by the direction of his finger that he meant the wall of the county prison, "and beneath that wall's a road, and across that road's a dismal pool, and beyond that pool's a green hillside, with a road athurt it that comes down and crosses by the pool's head. Standin' 'pon that hillside you can see a door in the wall, twenty feet above the ground, an' openin' on nothing. Leastways, you could see it once; an' even now, if ye've good eyesight, ye can see where they've bricked it up." I could, in fact, even at our distance, detect the patch of recent stone-work; and knew something of its history.