in the atmosphere, or in the shafts, or squatting on the soil, will be treated as trespassers—­that is, decapitated by their very faithful and obedient servant, the owner of the said bunting.  Possibly my cloak might not have been respected, and the jus gentium might have been cruelly violated in my person—­for, in the dark, people commit deeds of darkness, gas being a great ally of morality—­but it so happened that, on this night, there was no other outside passenger; and the crime, which else was but too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal.  By the way, I may as well mention at this point, since a circumstantial accuracy is essential to the effect of my narrative, that there was no other person of any description whatever about the mail—­the guard, the coachman, and myself being allowed for—­except only one—­a horrid creature of the class known to the world as insiders, but whom young Oxford called sometimes “Trojans,” in opposition to our Grecian selves, and sometimes “vermin.”  A Turkish Effendi, who piques himself on good breeding, will never mention by name a pig.  Yet it is but too often that he has reason to mention this animal; since constantly, in the streets of Stamboul, he has his trousers deranged or polluted by this vile creature running between his legs.  But under any excess of hurry he is always careful, out of respect to the company he is dining with, to suppress the odious name, and to call the wretch “that other creature,” as though all animal life beside formed one group, and this odious beast (to whom, as Chrysippus observed, salt serves as an apology for a soul) formed another and alien group on the outside of creation.  Now I, who am an English Effendi, that think myself to understand good-breeding as well as any son of Othman, beg my reader’s pardon for having mentioned an insider by his gross natural name.  I shall do so no more; and, if I should have occasion to glance at so painful a subject, I shall always call him “that other creature.”  Let us hope, however, that no such distressing occasion will arise.  But, by the way, an occasion arises at this moment; for the reader will be sure to ask, when we come to the story, “Was this other creature present?” He was not; or more correctly, perhaps, it was not.  We dropped the creature—­or the creature, by natural imbecility, dropped itself—­within the first ten miles from Manchester.  In the latter case, I wish to make a philosophic remark of a moral tendency.  When I die, or when the reader dies, and by repute suppose of fever, it will never be known whether we died in reality of the fever or of the doctor.  But this other creature, in the case of dropping out of the coach, will enjoy a coroner’s inquest; consequently he will enjoy an epitaph.  For I insist upon it, that the verdict of a coroner’s jury makes the best of epitaphs.  It is brief, so that the public all find time to read; it is pithy, so that the surviving friends (if any can survive such