favourable position on the main and cross-country coach-routes: those of Worksop and Chesterfield on the one hand, and Gainsborough, Market Rasen, and Boston on the other. Besides being in receipt of the local coaching business between Stamford and Doncaster, Joseph Dennett horsed a stage of the Doncaster and Stamford Amity Coach and the Stamford and Retford Auxiliary Mail, among others. [Picture: An Old Postboy: John Blagg] Although overshadowed by the neighbouring “Bell” on Barnby Moor, kept by the mighty George Clark, this house did a good posting business. For one thing, the story of the “White Hart” as a posting-house does not go back so far as that of the “Bell,” for when Clark came to Barnby Moor he found a fine business already developed, but the rise of the “White Hart” into prominence dates only from the coming of the Dennetts. Twelve post-horses and three boys formed its ordinary posting establishment, and among them the name of John Blagg is prominent. He left the “Bell” at an early period and entered the service of the “White Hart” in 1834, remaining for forty-five years, and dying, at the age of seventy-five, in October 1880. The old posting-books of the house still show one of his feats of endurance, the riding post from Retford to York and back in one day, a distance of a hundred and ten miles. When posting became a thing of the past, John Blagg was still in request, and his well-remembered figure, clad in the traditional postboy costume of white breeches, blue jacket, and white beaver hat, was seen almost to the last at weddings and other celebrations when riding postillion was considered indispensable. Here he is, portrayed from the life, a characteristic figure of a vanished era. There are still some relics of that time at the “White Hart”: the old locker belonging to the Boston coach, in which the guard used to secure the valuables intrusted to him; and in the sunny old booking-office looking out upon the Market Square there are even now some old posting-saddles and postboys’ whips. XXXII LEAVING Retford by Bridgegate, the road rises at once to the long five-miles’ stretch of Barnby Moor, home of howling winds and whirling snow-wreaths in winter, and equally unprotected from the fierce glare of the midsummer sun. At the further end of this trying place, just past a huddled group of cottages at the bend of the road, stands the famous old “Blue Bell” inn. But no one was ever heard to talk of this old coaching hostelry as the “Blue Bell.” The “Bell,” Barnby Moor, was the title by which it was always known.