Jack Pooley was a great character. When he retired from the box, he joined the Yeomanry and entered his horse for a cavalry plate at a race-meeting. Two of the conditions of entry were that it must never have won £50, and also must be half-bred. Some objections being raised, it became necessary to examine him before the committee. To the first question, whether his horse had ever won £50, he replied, “No, indeed! but he’s helped to lose many a fifty—he ran three years in an opposition coach.” The next question was, “What is he by, Mr. Pooley?” “By?” said Jack. “I should say he was by a shorthorn bull, he’s such a devil of a roarer.” The answers, we are told, were considered eminently satisfactory. The mail-coachmen on the Shap and Penrith stage were for some time afflicted with a mare that stopped with every one of them in turn at the end of two miles. At last they all wearied of her, and orders were issued that if she refused again, she was not to be brought back alive. On this fateful journey she started, and, according to her use and wont, suddenly sulked and sat down on her haunches in the middle of the road, like a dog, with her fore-legs straight out in front. The coachman, armed by the contractor with power of life or death, did not proceed to tragical extremities. He got down, took a rail out of the hedge, and struck her nine times below the knees with the flat side of it. This treatment proved effectual, not only for that journey, but for all time, and she was docile and willing ever after. How bravely and doggedly the mails and stages battled on winter nights against the howling blasts of Shap and Stainmoor, sometimes contending with snowstorms and drifts in which not only the coachman and guard, but the passengers also, bore a hand at the snow-shovels and dug and delved until hands and feet, previously numbed with cold, glowed again! How anxiously, when that digging and delving seemed almost ineffectual and the drifts impassable, did they strain their vision to catch a glimpse through the murky night, filled with driving snowflakes for the cheerful lights of that roadside inn, the “Welcome into Cumberland,” telling travellers accustomed to this road not only of comfort available at hand, but of a farewell to the terrors of Westmoreland and approach to the sheltered little town of Penrith. XX At four miles and three-quarters from Kendal, at Watchgate, the finest view opens, along Sleddale. Beyond it comes the “Plough” inn, with pictorial sign and the couplet— He that by the Plough would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive. a statement to which farmers do not unanimously subscribe. [Illustration: BOROUGHBRIDGE, SHAP FELL.] [Sidenote: _HUCKS BROW_]