Daniel’s father, Drake Waterhouse, had once moved his person, two horses, a pistol, some bags of oats, a Geneva Bible, and a sack containing eleven hundred pounds sterling from York to London—a distance comparable to the one Daniel was attempting to cover with Mr. Threader—in a single day. And this at the height of the Civil War, when roads were so muddy, and canals so murky, as to erase the distinction. That ride, and others like it, had become proverbial among Puritan traders: examplars of Industry. Mr. Threader, by contrast, played the slothful tortoise to Drake’s enterprising hare. On the first day of the journey, they stopped no fewer than five times so that Mr. Threader could engage in lengthy conversations with gentlemen who surprised them along the way—in all cases, gentlemen who happened to have been in attendance at the Court of Stannary the day before.