do you know about that coach?"
"Only tales," I said. "Many people swear they have heard it, or seen it, on stormy nights. I know a girl who swears to it, and also a doctor who passed it on the road, and it nearly frightened his horse to death and him too.
"The tale of the two tramps is funny. They were trudging into St Andrews one wild stormy night when this uncanny coach overtook them. It stopped; the door opened, and a white hand beckoned towards them. One tramp rushed up and got in, then suddenly the door noiselessly shut and the coach moved off, leaving the other tramp alone in the pitiless wind and rain. 'I never saw my old mate again,' said the tramp, when he told the tale, 'and I never shall—that there old coach was nothing of this here world of ours, it took my old mate off to Davy Jones's locker mighty smart, poor fellow."
"They say his body was found in the sea some months afterwards, and the tale goes that the phantom coach finishes its nocturnal journey in the waves of St Andrews Bay."
"Whose coach is it?" asked all that were in the room.
"I cannot say; some say Bethune, others Sharpe, and others Hackston; I do not know who is supposed to be the figure inside, unless it is his Satanic Majesty himself. At all events, it seems a certain fact that a phantom coach has been seen from time to time on the roads round St Andrews. I have never seen any of these things myself."
"Well," said Carson, "that awful coach does appear; it appeared to me, and, doubtless, in the course of time will appear to many others. It bodes no one any good, and I pity with all my heart anyone who meets it. Beware of those roads late at night, or, like me, you may some day to your injury meet that ghastly, uncanny, old phantom coach. If so, you will remember it to your dying day."
"Curious thing that about seeing the coach and the bird at the same time, and in two places so far apart," murmured the golfing Johnny, "and then Carson's brother dying too."
"I'd sooner see the bird than the coach," said one.
"Guess I'd rather not see either of them," said an American present, "glad we have no phantom coaches in Yankeeland."
