We shall not be far wrong if we identify Towcester with the town at which the coach with Tom Brown on board stopped for breakfast, and the “well-known sporting house,” famous for its breakfasts, with the “Saracen’s Head.” A half-past seven breakfast, in a low, dark, wainscoted room, hung with sporting prints; a blazing fire, and a card of hunting fixtures stuck in the mantel-glass. Twenty minutes for breakfast, with such a spread as pigeon-pie, ham, cold boiled beef, kidneys and steak, bacon and eggs, buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, smoking hot—why, an irresolute man would waste some of those precious minutes in considering where to begin. But the hungry are not at such a loss, and certainly little Tom Brown could not have been, for he ate kidney and pigeon-pie and drank coffee till his skin was as tight as a drum, and then had sufficient time to pay the head waiter in leisurely manner and to stroll calmly to the door, to see the horses put to. And then, all being ready, they are off again. “Let ’em go, Dick!” says the coachman, and the ostlers fly back, drawing off the horse-cloths like lightning. Along the High Street goes the “Tally-Ho,” with passing glimpses into first-floor windows, where the burgesses are seen shaving; past shops and private houses, where shopboys are cleaning windows and housemaids doing the steps, and out of the town as the clock strikes eight. A very pretty glimpse, this, of the “good old times,” but the coaches did not always hark away so triumphantly; as, for example, when, on a day in March, 1829, an axle of the celebrated “Wonder” coach broke in Towcester street, and the unfortunate coachman was killed in the inevitable upset. The hilly eight miles or so between Towcester and Weedon Beck witnessed many thrilling escapades in the coaching sort. One eminence, rejoicing in the name of Dirt House Hill, was the scene of a violent collision, in which the Holyhead Mail and the Manchester Mail came into disastrous contact, June 29th, 1838. It was one of the closing smashes of the Coaching Age. Here is the official account:—