forward.  Fast enough it lighted up the slippery way, the glistening fences, the falling sleet which sheathed fields and houses with glare ice.  And the city, when they came to it, was no better.  It was worse; for the dolefulness was positive here, which before in the broad open country was only negative.  The icy sheath was now upon things less pure than itself.  The sleet fell where cold and cheerlessness seemed to be the natural state of things.  Few people ventured into the streets, and those few looked and moved as if they felt it a sad morning, which probably they did.  The very horses stumbled along their way, and here and there a poor creature had lost footing entirely and gone down on the ice.  Slowly and carefully picking its way along, the stage-coach drew up at last at its pace in Court St.

The disease had spent itself, or Winthrop’s excellent constitution had made good its rights; for he got out of the coach feeling free from pain, though weak and unsteady as if he had been much longer ill.  It would have been pleasant to take the refreshment of brushes and cold water, for his first step; but it must have been a pleasure paid for; so he did not go into the house.  For the same reason he did not agree to the offer of the stage-driver to carry him and his baggage to the end of his journey.  He looked about for some more humble way of getting his trunk thither, meaning to take the humblest of all for himself.  But porters seemed all to have gone off to breakfast or to have despaired of a job.  None were in sight.  Only a man was shuffling along on the other side of the way, looking over at the stage-coach.

“Here, Jem —­ Tom —­ Patrick!” —­ cried the stage-driver, —­ “can’t you take the gentleman’s trunk for him?”

“Michael, at your service, and if it’s all one t’ ye,” said the person called, coming over.  “I’m the boy!  Will this be the box?”

“That is it; but how will you take it?” said Winthrop.

“Sure I’ll carry it —­ asy —­ some kind of a way,” said Michael, handling the trunk about in an unsettled fashion and seeming to meditate a hoist of it to his shoulders.  “Where will it go, sir-r?”

“Stop, —­ that won’t do —­ that handle won’t hold,” said the trunk’s master.  “Haven’t you a wheelbarrow here?”

“Well that’s a fact,” said Michael, letting the end of the trunk down into the street with a force that threatened its frail constitution; —­ “if the handle wouldn’t hould, there’d be no hoult onto it, at all.  Here! —­ can’t you let us have a barrow, some one amongst ye? —­ I’ll be back with it afore you’ll be wanting it, I’ll engage.”

Winthrop seconded the application; and the wheelbarrow after a little delay came forth.  The trunk was bestowed on it by the united efforts of the Irishman and the ostler.

“Now, don’t let it run away from you, Pat,” said the latter.

“It’ll not run away from Michael, I’ll engage,” said that personage with a capable air, pulling up first his trowsers band and then the wheelbarrow handles, to be ready for a start.  “Which way, then, sir, will I turn?”