Holtby’s career was as varied as many of the old coachmen’s, but more prosperous. He began as a stable-hand at the “Rose and Crown,” Easingwold, and rose to be a postboy. Thence to the box of a cross-country coach was an easy transition, and his combined dash and certainty as a whip at last found him a place on the London and Edinburgh “Highflyer,” whence he was transferred to the mail. During these years he had saved money, and was a comparatively rich man when coaching ended; so that although he lost some heavy sums in ill-judged investments, still he died worth over £3,000. “Rash Tom,” as they called him, from his showy style of driving, was indeed something of a “Corinthian,” and coming into contact with the high and mighty of that era, reflected their manners and shared their tastes. If the reflection, like that of a wavy mirror, was not quite perfect, and erred rather in the direction of caricature, that was a failing not found in Tom only, and was accordingly overlooked. Moreover, Tom was useful. No man could break in a horse like him, and nowhere was a better tutor in the art of driving. “If,” said Old Jerry, “Tom Holtby didn’t live on potato-skins and worn’t such a one for lickin’ folks’ boots, he’d be perfect.” “Old Jerry,” who probably had some professional grudge against Holtby, referred to potato-skins as well as to boot-licking in a figurative way. He meant to satirise Holtby as a saving man and as an intimate of those who at the best treated Jerry himself with obvious condescension. Jerry himself was one of the most famous of postboys, and remained for long years in the service of the “Black Swan.” The burden of his old age was the increasing meanness of the times. “Them wor graand toimes for oos!” he would say, in his Yorkshire lingo, talking of the early years of the nineteenth century, and so they must have been, for that was the tail-end of the era when all England went mad over Parliamentary elections, and when Yorkshire, the biggest of all the counties, was the maddest. Everybody posted, money was spent like water on bribery and corruption, and on more reputable items of expenditure, and postboys shared in the golden shower. VII