Pratt’s Bottom, the next of the hamlets strung so numerously, like beads, upon this portion of the Hastings Road, is a mile and a half ahead. It was here, on the night of August 27th, 1841, that the down Hastings Mail met with the first of the two misadventures that befell it on this occasion. The coach had passed through the toll-gate that then stood here, and was going at about eight miles an hour, when it ran over an old woman seated in the middle of the road, helplessly drunk. The apparent truth of the old saying that Providence especially looks after fools, drunkards, and children lost none of its point here, for the coach and horses, in some marvellous way, passed over her without doing her any injury except a slight bruise on the forehead, supposed to have been caused by the drag-chain. By some almost miraculous interposition, the horses seem to have dashed past on either side of her. The coach was stopped, and the passengers and guard, naturally thinking her days were ended by her being run over or kicked to death, got nervously down to remove what they thought was at least a dying, if not an already dead, creature, when they were assailed by a vigorous torrent of abuse. Somewhat relieved by this evidence that she could not be very seriously hurt, they picked her up, and, as she was much too drunk to walk, placed her on the grass by the roadside, out of the way of the traffic. Then the coach started again; but they had not gone beyond two miles when, through the clear air of a very beautiful night, the coachman saw a number of waggons ahead, approaching. He called to the guard to blow his horn, which the guard accordingly did, when the waggons drew off to one side. Unfortunately they were drawn to their off-side, directly into the path of the on-coming mail, which dashed into Barnett’s Tunbridge van, at the head of them. The van was hurled violently into the hedge, and the coach, going off at an angle from this terrific impact, then went full tilt into a hay-wain. The splinter-bar ran under the shafts of the wain and so, happily for the passengers, kept the coach from crashing over; but the shock of the encounter flung the coachman from his seat and the wheels went over his body. He rolled over and moaned piteously, but never spoke again. Carried into the “Polhill Arms,” he shortly expired there. Rough-and-ready roadside repairs were effected and the coach went on to Riverhead, but the passengers, thoroughly unnerved by the chances and disasters of this ominous night, preferred to walk on to that village, three miles and a half away, where, at the “White Hart,” they rested. The surviving toll-house at Pratt’s Bottom is neighboured by a signpost which directs to Knockholt, to Sevenoaks, to Chelsfield, and—to the Workhouse: _i.e._ the workhouse we have just passed at Lock’s Bottom. That way also leads to London, but that is merely an incidental matter. [Illustration: THE OLD TOLL-HOUSE, PRATT’S BOTTOM.]