topmost

Well! well! cried I, as the coachman turn’d in at the gates, I find I shall do very well : and by the time he had wheel’d round the court, and brought me up to the door, I found myself so much the better for my own lecture, that I neither ascended the steps like a victim to justice, who was to part with life upon the topmost, nor did I mount them with a skip and a couple of strides, as I do when I fly up, Eliza! to thee, to meet it.