The increasing snow rendered this intimation rather alarming, for, as it drove full in the lad's face and lay whitening all around him, it served in two different ways to confuse his knowledge of the country, and to diminish the chance of his recovering the right track.

Brown then himself got out and looked round, not, it may be well imagined, from any better hope than that of seeing some house at which he might make inquiry.

But none appeared; he could therefore only tell the lad to drive steadily on.

The road on which they were ran through plantations of considerable extent and depth, and the traveller therefore conjectured that there must be a gentleman's house at no great distance.

At length, after struggling wearily on for about a mile, the post-boy stopped, and protested his horses would not budge a foot farther; 'but he saw,' he said, 'a light among the trees, which must proceed from a house; the only way was to inquire the road there.' Accordingly, he dismounted, heavily encumbered with a long great-coat and a pair of boots which might have rivalled in thickness the seven-fold shield of Ajax.