Some little while later, one stormy evening, the Colonel was on the Mail at Bangor. Harper, at the end of his day’s work, got down and went home; the new team was put to, and the Mail stood waiting for Jack Williams, the coachman who was to take it across the bridge and on to Holyhead. Five minutes passed; time was up, and no coachman appeared. “What the devil are you waiting for?” asked Hodgson, the guard, coming back from the Post Office with the bags. “Where is Jack Williams?” No one had seen Jack Williams, and no one seemed to know whether he was dead or alive. At last one of the horsekeepers seemed to remember all of a sudden that Williams had been summoned to attend a magistrates’ meeting on the other side of the Menai Bridge; that Harper was to have taken the Mail over the bridge, and Williams to get up at the public-house where the worthy beaks who had summoned him were to hold their conclave. “Yess, inteet, I remember it wass summoned to attend the magistrates’ meeting” (_it_ standing, of course, for ‘Chack’ Williams). “Now then,” said Hodgson, growing impatient, “we can’t wait here all day; somebody must drive. Mr. Reynardson, will you be so good? We shall be late for the packet.” “I don’t care,” said the Colonel, “whether you are late or not; I am thankful to say I am not going to cross such a day as this. Jump up and drive yourself, and I’ll take charge of your bags. Bicknell has said that I am not to drive his horses, and if you take root here I don’t care; I’ll not touch them.” “Well, sir, we shall be late for the packet if you _won’t_,” said Hodgson. “I don’t care,” he replied, “I dare say I shall be able to get to where I am going in time for dinner, or at all events before bedtime, so I’ll have nothing to do with either the mail or Mr. Bicknell’s horses, and if the mail stays here all night it’s nothing to me.” “Now, Hodgson,” said Bicknell, who just then appeared at the door, “what’s the Mail standing there for.” “That’s _just_ what I should like to know,” answered Hodgson; “but the Mail can’t go, sir, without some one to drive it. Jack Williams is not to be found, Charlie Harper has gone home long ago, and Mr. Reynardson says you said he was not to drive your horses any more, and he won’t have anything to do with them; so what’s to be done I don’t know. We shall be late for the packet, and then you know there’ll be a row again with the Post Office people.” Things seemed to be in something of a fix, and Hodgson, though in a fuss to be off, was rather enjoying the joke, which began to be a serious one; for there seemed to be no chance of any one to drive. It was blowing great guns, and the Menai Bridge would be rocking about like a cradle, and the team of greys were not the handiest in the world, if they had not got up the right way in the morning, and if things went a little wrong.