But the stage is at the door; the coach and four mules answer theadvertisement of being "second to none on the continent." We mountto the seat with the driver. The sun is bright; the wind is in thesouthwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the longride is propitious.

But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young andsickly, with the infant inside her arms. The woman has paid her farethrough to Guysborough, and holds her ticket. It turns out, however,that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St. Mary'sCross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough,which is away down on Chedabucto Bay. (The reader will notice thisgeographical familiarity.) And this stage does not go in thedirection of St. Mary's. She will not get out, she will notsurrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again. Why should she? Andthe stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over theproblem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of thetavern to reason with her. The infant joins its voice from the coachwindow in the clamor of the discussion. The infant prevails. Thestage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we areoff, away from the black homes, over the sandy road, out upon ahilly and not happy country. And the driver begins to tell usstories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow,and great peril to men and cattle.