### Mile One — Leaving Hartfield Territory
Old Bren had been driving noble carriages for thirty-one years.
He had driven viscounts to their weddings and viscountesses to their funerals. He had driven men who were crying and men who were drunk and men who were both. He had driven carriages containing arguments, declarations, confessions, and at least twice, things he had declined to identify.
He had developed, over thirty-one years, the practiced professional deafness of a coachman who understood that what happened behind the curtain was not his business and that his business was the road ahead, the horses' pace, and the distance remaining.
He needed all thirty-one years of that practice this morning.
