Briley often made his seven-mile journey in
entire solitude, except for the limp leather mail-bag, which he held
firmly to the floor of the carriage with his heavily shod left foot.
The mail-bag had almost a personality to him, born of long
association. Mr. Briley was a meek and timid-looking body, but he held
a warlike soul, and encouraged his fancies by reading awful tales of
bloodshed and lawlessness in the far West. Mindful of stage robberies
and train thieves, and of express messengers who died at their posts,
he was prepared for anything; and although he had trusted to his own
strength and bravery these many years, he carried a heavy pistol under
his front-seat cushion for better defense. This awful weapon was
familiar to all his regular passengers, and was usually shown to
strangers by the time two of the seven miles of Mr. Briley's route had
been passed. The pistol was not loaded. Nobody (at least not Mr.
Briley himself) doubted that the mere sight of such a weapon would
turn the boldest adventurer aside.
Protected by such a man and such a piece of armament, one gray Friday
morning in the edge of winter, Mrs. Fanny Tobin was traveling from
Sanscrit Pond to North Kilby. She was an elderly and feeble-looking
woman, but with a shrewd twinkle in her eyes, and she felt very
anxious about her numerous pieces of baggage and her own personal
safety. She was enveloped in many shawls and smaller wrappings, but
they were not securely fastened, and kept getting undone and flying
loose, so that the bitter December cold seemed to be picking a lock
now and then, and creeping in to steal away the little warmth she had.
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