Accordingly, taking a turn to avoid the two nearest villages, he directed his steps towards London, where, again taking the post-coach for Dover, he arrived on the channel shore just in time to learn that the very coach in which he rode brought the news to the authorities there that all intercourse between the two nations was indefinitely suspended.

The characteristic taciturnity and formal stolidity of his fellow-travellers--all Englishmen, mutually unacquainted with each other, and occupying different positions in life--having prevented his sooner hearing the tidings.
Here was another accumulation of misfortunes.

All visions but those of eventual imprisonment or starvation vanished from before the present realities of poor Israel Potter.

The Brentford gentleman had flattered him with the prospect of receiving something very handsome for his services as courier.

That hope was no more.