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to go on.
    Emboldened by yet more brandy, the captain took the opportunity to show off to his wife and the party by saying, b’Gad, he, too, was an Englishman and would face any peril that the journey could offer. The others were reluctant to be left behind, and so the passengers boarded the coach again, and, to faint hurrahs from the half-frozen post-boys, they set out on the road. At Egham, one mile and three furlongs on, it began to snow again.
    The coachman pulled up at the Catherine Wheel for another glass of fortifier and then the coach set out once more.
    Now the snow was falling as it should fall at Christmastime, when men are snug in parlours in front of blazing fires and not out braving the blasts in a Flying Machine. The coachman, foreseeing the worst, since at every moment the snowfall was becoming heavier, tried to churn his horses into a canter as the gloom of a winter’s afternoon settled on Bagshot Heath. The guard beside him fingered his carbine delicately and stared anxiously about for highwaymen, but the coachman said no highwayman would be stupid enough to be out of doors in such weather. The guard said that it was due to the coachman’s stupidity that they were all out of doors themselves, to which the coachman replied that the guard always had been a milksop, to which the guard, mad with passion, screamed at the coachman: ‘I ’ates you like pison!’ and fired his carbine in the air.
    Captain Seaton, the effects of the brandy he had drunk beginning to fade, had been seeing a highwayman behind every bush.
    At the sound of the shot from the roof, he wrenched open the door of the coach and jumped into a snow-drift. At the same time, the coachman drove into a rut a yard deep and the coach stuck fast.
    The coachman doubled-thonged his wheelers, who dragged the coach out to the side of the road … and the whole coach slowly overturned into a gravel pit.
    Chaos reigned inside the coach. Everyone was lying on top of everyone else in a jumble of arms and legs. The door above them opened, showing them the coachman’s ruddy face and the sky behind him. ‘Better come out o’ there,’ he said and disappeared.
    He was replaced by the aristocrat, who lifted Hannah out, then Mrs Seaton, the youth, the lawyer, and then finally, with a great heaving, Mrs Bradley.
    ‘You are a Trojan, sir,’ said Hannah to their rescuer. ‘I am Miss Hannah Pym.’
    He smiled and swept off his hat. ‘And I, Miss Pym, am Harley. Lord Ranger Harley.’
    Behind Miss Pym, the youth gave a slight moan and fainted dead away.
    ‘Puny little fellow,’ said Lord Harley with contempt. ‘Move aside, Miss Pym, and I will rub some snow on his face.’
    In a flash, Hannah remembered her dream about Mrs Clarence. Something made her say urgently, ‘No, leave him to me.’
    Lord Harley strode off and cut the traces and led one of the wheelers free, mounted it and rode off in search of help. All the other horses were, amazingly, unharmed.
    While Hannah knelt down beside the fallen youth, the other passengers and the coachman and guard stood around in half-frozen attitudes, including Captain Seaton, who was cursing and mumbling and swearing blind he had seen a highwayman.
    Hannah loosened Edward’s clothing and discovered that her budding suspicions had been right. ‘Edward’ was in fact not a beautiful young man but a beautiful young woman. But something prompted Hannah to help this girl keep up her disguise. She held a bottle of smelling-salts under the girl’s nose and watched those violet eyes flutter open. Then the eyes became wider with fear. ‘Hush,’ said Hannah, ‘do not say anything. Help is on the way.’ She raised the girl to her feet and kept close beside her.
    The coachman was now sitting on a mound of snow drinking brandy, occasionally putting his flask down and moving his arms as if driving phantom horses. The guard had replaced his carbine with a blunderbuss. A sudden movement in the snow made him shout,