The Phantom Coach - Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards copy

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Phantom Coach by Amelia B. Edwards. The circumstances I
am about to relate to you have truth to recommend them.
They happen to myself, and my recollection of them is
as vivid as if they had taken place only yesterday.
Twenty years, however, have gone by since that night. During

(00:21):
those twenty years I have told the story to but
one other person. I tell it now with the reluctance
which I find it difficult to overcome. All I entreat meanwhile,
is that you will abstain from forcing your own conclusions
upon me. I want nothing explained away, as I desire
no arguments. My mind on this subject is quite made up,

(00:44):
and having the testimony of my own senses to rely upon,
I prefer to abide by it. Well, it was just
twenty years ago, and within a day or two of
the end of the grouse season I had been out
all day with my gun and had no sport to
speak of. The wind was due east the month December.

(01:05):
The place a bleak white moor in the far north
of England, and I had lost my way, and it
was not a pleasant place in which to lose one's way.
With the first feathery flakes of a coming snowstorm, just
fluttering down upon the heather, and the leaden evening closing
in all around. I shaded my eyes with my hand

(01:25):
and stared anxiously into the gathering darkness, where the purple
moorland melted into a range of low hills, some ten
or twelve miles distant. Not the faintest smoke wreath, not
the tiniest cultivated patch or fence or sheep track, met
my eyes in any direction. There. I was nothing for

(01:46):
it but to walk on and take my chance of
finding what shelter I could by the way. So I
shouldered my gun again and pushed wearily forward, for I
had been on foot since an hour after daybreak, had
eaten nothing since breakfast. Meanwhile, the snow began to come
down with ominous steadiness, and the wind fell. After this,

(02:09):
the cold became more intense, and the night came rapidly up.
As for me, my prospects darkened with the darkening sky,
and my heart grew heavy as I thought how my
young wife was already watching for me through the window
of our little inn parlor, and thought of all the
suffering in store for her throughout this weary night. We

(02:31):
had been married four months, and, having spent our autumn
in the Highlands, were now lodging in a remote little
village situated just on the verge of the great English Moorlands.
We were very much in love, and of course very happy.
This morning when we parted, she had implored me to

(02:52):
return before dusk, and I had promised her that I would.
What would I not have given to have kept my word?
Now weary as I was, I felt that with the supper,
an hour's rest, and a guide, I might still get
back to her before midnight, if only guide and shelter
could be found. And all this time the snow fell

(03:14):
and the night thickened. I stopped and shouted every now
and then, but my shout seemed only to make the
silence deeper. Then a vague sense of uneasiness came upon me,
and I began to remember stories of travelers who had
walked on and on in the falling snow until wearied

(03:34):
out they were fain to lie down and sleep their
lives away. Would it not be possible, i asked myself,
to keep on thus through all the long dark night.
Would there not come a time when my limbs must fail,
and my resolution give way, when I too must sleep

(03:55):
the sleep of death. Death. I shuddered, How hard to
die just now, when life lay all so bright before me?
How hard for my darling whose whole loving heart but
that thought was not to be borne to banish it?
I shouted again, louder and longer, and then listened eagerly.

(04:16):
Was my shout answered? Or did I only fancy that
I heard a far off cry? I hollowed again and again,
and the echo followed. Then a wavering speck of light
came suddenly out of the dark, shifting, disappearing, growing momentarily
nearer and brighter. Running towards it at full speed, I

(04:36):
found myself, to my great joy, face to face with
an old man at a lantern. Thank God, was the
exclamation that burst involuntarily from my lips. Blinking and frowning.
He lifted his lantern and peered into my face. What for,
growled he sulkily, Well for you, I began to fear

(05:00):
I should be lost in the snow. Eh, Then folks
do get cast away hereabout from time to time, and
wants to hinder you from being cast away. Likewise, if
the Lord's so minded. If the Lord is so minded
that you and I shall be lost together, friend, we
must submit, I replied, But I don't mean to be

(05:20):
lost without you. How far am I now from Dwelding
a good twenty mile more or less, and the nearest
village The nearest village is white and that's twelve mile
to the other side. Where do you live, then, ow yonder,
said he, with a vague jerk of the lantern. You're

(05:42):
going home, I presume maybe I am. Then I'm going
with you. The old man shook his head and rubbed
his nose reflectively with the handle of the lantern. It
ain't no use, cried he. He a'll let you in,
not he? We'll see about that, I replied briskly. Who

(06:02):
is he the Master? Who is the Master? That's not
to you? Was the unceremonious reply. Well, well, you lead
the way and I'll engage that the Master shall give
me shelter and a supper tonight. M you can try him,
muttered my reluctant guide, and still shaking his head, he hobbled,

(06:26):
and I'm like away through the falling snow. A large
mass loomed up presently out of the darkness and a
huge dog rushed out, barking furiously. Is this the house?
I asked, Aye, it's the house down, babe, and he
fumbled in his pocket for the key. I drew up
close behind him, prepared to lose no chance of entrance,

(06:47):
and saw in the little circle of light shed by
the lantern that the door was heavily studded with iron nails,
like the door of a prison. In another minute he
had turned the key, and I had pushed past him
into the house. Once inside, I looked round with curiosity
and found myself in a great raptored hall which served
apparently a variety of uses. One end was piled to

(07:11):
the roof of corn like a barn. The other was
stored with flower sacs, agricultural implements, casks, and all kinds
of miscellaneous lumber, while from the beams overhead hung rows
of hams, flitches, and bunches of dried herbs for winter use.
In the center of the floor stood some huge object,

(07:32):
gauntly dressed in a dingy wrapping cloth, and reaching half
way to the raptors. Lifting a corner of his cloth,
I saw, to my surprise a telescope of very considerable size,
mounted on a rude movable platform with four small wheels.
The tube was made of painted wood, bound round with
bands of metal rudely fashioned. The speculum, so far as

(07:55):
I could estimate its size in the dim light, measured
at least fifteen inches in diameter. While I was yet
examining the instrument and asking myself whether it was not
the work of some self taught optician, a belt rang sharply.
That's for you, said my guide, with a malicious grin
yonders his room. He pointed to a low, blank door

(08:18):
at the opposite side of the hall. I crossed over,
rapped somewhat loudly, and went in without waiting for an invitation.
A huge, white haired old man rose from a table
covered with books and papers and confronted me sternly. Who
are you? Said he? How came you here? What do

(08:39):
you want? James Murray, barrister in law, on foot across
the moor, meet drink and sleep. He bent his bushy
brows into a portentous frown. Mine is not a house
of entertainment, he said, haughtily, Jacob, how dared you admit

(08:59):
this stream? I didn't admit him, in grumbled the old man.
He followed me over the mirror and shouldered his way
in before me. I'm no match for six foot two,
and pray, sir, by what right have you forced an
entrance into my house? It was the same by which
I should have clung to your boat if I were
drowning the right of self preservation, Self preservation. There's an

(09:24):
inch of snow on the ground already, I replied briefly,
and it would be deep enough to cover my body
by daybreak. He strode to the window, pulled aside a
heavy black curtain, and looked out. It is true, he said,
you can stay if you choose, till morning. Jacob served
the supper with this, He waved me to a seat,

(09:48):
resumed his own, and became at once absorbed in the
studies from which I had disturbed him. I placed my
gun in a corner, drew a chair to the hearth,
and examined my quarters at leisure. Smaller and less incongruous
in its arrangements than the hall, this room contained, nevertheless,
much to my awakened curiosity. The floor was carpelous, The

(10:10):
whitewashed walls were in parts scrawled over with strange diagrams,
and in others covered with shelves crowded with philosophical instruments,
the uses of many of which were unknown to me.
On one side of the fireplace stood a bookcase filled
with dinghy folios, on the other a small organ fantastically
decorated with painted carvings of medieval saints and devils. Through

(10:33):
the half open door of a cupboard at the further
end of the room, I saw a long array of
geological specimens, surgical preparations, crucibles, retorts, and jars of chemicals.
While on the mantel shelf beside amid a number of
small objects, stood a model of the solar system, a
small galvanic battery, and a microscope. Every chair had its burden,

(10:56):
Every corner was heaped high with books. The very floor
littered over with maps, casts, papers, tracings, and learned lumber
of all conceivable kinds. I stared about me with an amazement,
increased by every fresh object upon which my eyes chanced
to rest. So strange a room I had never seen

(11:17):
yet seemed its stranger still to find such a room
in a lone farmhouse amid those wild and solitary moors.
Over and over again, I looked from my host to
his surroundings, and from his surroundings back to my host,
asking myself who and what could he be? His head
was singularly fine, but it was more the head of

(11:38):
a poet than of a philosopher. Broad in the temples,
prominent over the eyes, and clothed with a rough profusion
of perfectly white hair. It had all the ideality and
much of the ruggedness that characterizes the head of Louis
von Beethoven. There were much the same lines about the mouth,
and the same stern furrows in the brow. There was

(12:00):
the same concentration of expression. While I was yet observing him,
the door opened and Jacob brought in the supper. His
master then closed his book, rose, and, with more courtesy
of manner than he had yet shown, invited me to
the table. A dish of ham and eggs, a loaf
of brown bread, and a bottle of admirable sherry were

(12:21):
placed before me. I have but the homeliest farmhouse fair
to offer you, sir, said my entertainer. Your appetite, I trust,
will make up for the deficiencies of our larder. I
had already fallen upon the viands, and now protested with
the enthusiasm of a starving sportsman that I had never
eaten anything so delicious. He bowed stiffly and sat down

(12:45):
to his own supper, which consisted primarily a jug of
milk and a basin of porridge. We ate in silence,
and when we had done, Jacob removed the tray. I
then drew my chair back to the fireside. My host,
somewhat to my surprise, did the same, and, turning abruptly
towards me, said, sir, I have lived here in Strickword's

(13:08):
hirement for three and twenty years. During that time, I
have not seen as many strange faces, and I have
not read a single newspaper. You are the first stranger
who has crossed my threshold for more than four years.
Will you favor me with a few words of information
respecting that outer world from which I have parted company?

(13:29):
So long? Pray interrogate me, I replied, I am heartily
at your service. He bent his head in acknowledgment, leaned
forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his
chin supported in the palms of his hands, stared fixedly
into the fire, and proceeded to question me. His inquiries

(13:50):
related chiefly to scientific matters, with the later progress of which,
as applied to the practical purposes of life, he was
almost wholly unacquainted. No student of science myself, I replied,
as well as my slight information permitted. But the task
was far from easy, and I was much relieved when
passing from interrogation to discussion, he began pouring forth his

(14:13):
own conclusions upon the facts which I have been attempting
to place before him. He talked, and I listened, spellbound.
He talked till I believe he almost forgot my presence
and only thought aloud, I have never heard anything like it. Then,
I have never heard anything like it since. Familiar with
all systems of all philosophies, subtle in analysis, bold in generalization,

(14:37):
he poured forth his thoughts in an uninterrupted stream, and,
still leaning forward in the same moody attitude, with his
eyes fixed upon the fire, wandered from topic to topic, from
speculation to speculation, like an inspired dreamer, from practical science
to mental philosophy, from electricity in the wire to electricity

(14:57):
in the nerve, from watts to mess from Mesmer to Reichenbach,
from Reichenbach to Swedenborg Spinoza, Condele, Descartes, Berkeley, Aristotle, Plato,
and the magi and the mystics of the East were
transitions which, however bewildering in their variety and scope, seemed
easy and harmonious upon his lips as sequences in music

(15:20):
thirteen years and by I forget now by what link
of conjecture or illustration he passed on to that field
which lies beyond the boundary line of even conjectural philosophy,
and reaches no man knows whither. He spoke of the
soul and its aspirations, of the spirit, and its powers
of second sight, of prophecy, of those phenomena which, under

(15:44):
the name of ghosts, specters, and supernatural appearances, have been
denied by the skeptics and attested by the credulous of
all ages. The world he said, grows hourly more and
more skeptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius.
And now our men of science foster the fatal tendency.

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They condemn as fable, all that resists experiment, They reject
as false, all that cannot be brought to the test
of the laboratory or the dissecting room. Against what superstition
have they waged so long and obstinate a war as
against the belief and apparitions. And yet, what superstition has

(16:27):
maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long
and so firmly. Show me any fact in physics and history,
in archaeology which is supported by testimonies so wide and
so various, attested by all races of men, in all
ages and in all climates, by the soberist stages of antiquity,

(16:48):
by the rudest savage of to day, by the Christian,
the Pagan, the pantheist, the materialists. This phenomena is treated
as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century.
Circumstantial evidence ways with them as a feather in the balance.
The comparison of causes with effects, however valuable, and physical
science is put aside as worthless and unreliable. The evidence

(17:11):
of the competent witness, however conclusive and a court of justice,
counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces is
condemned as a trifler. He who believes is a dreamer
or a fool. He spoke with a bitterness, and having
said thus, relapsed For some minutes into silence. Presently, he

(17:34):
raised his head from his hands and added, with an
altered voice and manner, I sir paused, investigated, believed, and
was not ashamed to state my convictions to the world.
I too was branded as a visionary, held up to
ridicule b my contemporaries, and hooted from that field of

(17:54):
science in which I had labored with honor during all
the best years of my life. These things happened just
three and twenty year ago. Since then, I have lived
as you see me living now, and the world has
forgotten me as I have forgotten the world. You have
my history. It is a very sad one, I murmured,

(18:16):
scarcely knowing what to answer. It is a very common one,
he replied. I have only suffered for the truth, as
many a better and wiser man have suffered before me.
He rose, as if desirous of ending the conversation, and
went over to the window. It has ceased snowing, he observed,
as he dropped the curtain and came back to the fireside. Ceased,

(18:40):
I exclaimed, starting eagerly to my feet. Oh, if only
it were possible, But no, it is hopeless. Even if
I could find my way across the moor. I could
not walk twenty miles to night, walk twenty miles to night,
repeated my host. What are you thinking of of my wife?

(19:01):
I replied, impatiently, of my young wife, who does not
know that I have lost my way, and who is
at this moment breaking her heart with suspense and terror.
Where is she at Dwelding twenty miles away? At Dwarlding,
he echoed thoughtfully, Yes, the distance, It is true, it

(19:21):
is twenty miles. But are you so very anxious to
save the next six or eight hours, so very very
anxious that I would give ten guineas at this moment
for a guide and a horse. Your wish can be
gratified at a less costly rate, said he, smiling. The
night mail from the North, which changes horses at Dwelding,

(19:44):
passes within five miles of this spot, and will be
due at a certain cross road in about an hour
and a quarter. If Jacob were to go with you
across the moor and put you in the old coach road,
you could find your way, I suppose to where it
joins a new one easily. Gladly he smiled again, rang

(20:05):
the bell gave the old servant his directions, and, taking
a bottle of whiskey in a wine glass from the
cupboard in which he kept his chemicals, said the snow
lies deep and it will be difficult walking to night
on the moor. A glass of osquibbo before you start.
I would have declined the spirit, but he pressed it
on me, and I drank it and went down my

(20:26):
throat like liquid flame, and almost took my breath away.
It is strong, he said, but it will help to
keep out the cold. And now you have no moments
to spare good night. I thanked him for his hospitality,
and would have shaken hands, but that he had turned
away before I could finish my sentence. In another minute,

(20:47):
I had traversed the hall, Jacob had locked the outer
door behind me, and we were out on the wide
white moor. Although the wind had fallen, it was still
bitterly cold. Not a star glimmered in the black vault overhead.
Not a sound save the rapid crunching of the snow
beneath our feet, disturbed the heavy stillness of the night. Jacob,

(21:09):
not too well pleased with his mission, shambled on before
in sullen silence, his lantern in his hand, and his
shadow at his feet. I followed with my gun over
my shoulder, as little inclined for conversation as himself. My
thoughts were full of my late host. His voice yet
rang in my ears. His eloquence yet held my imagination captive.

(21:32):
I remembered to this day with surprise, how my over
excited brain retained whole sentences, and parts of sentences, troops
of brilliant images, and fragments of splendid reason in the
very words in which he had uttered them. Musing thus
over what I had heard, and striving to recall a
lost link here and there, I strode on at the

(21:52):
heels of my guide, absorbed and unobservant, presently at the end,
as it seemed to me, only a few minutes. He
came to a sudden halt and said, Yeah, it's your road.
Keep the stone fence to your right hand, and you
can't fail of the way. This, then, is the old
coach road. Ay, this is the old coach road. And

(22:16):
how far do I go? Before I reached the crossroads
nigh upon three mile? I pulled out my purse, and
he became more communicative. The road's a fair road enough,
said he for foot passengers, but twas over steep and
narrow for the northern traffic. You'll mind where the parapet's

(22:36):
broken away. Close again the sign posts. It's never been
inmitted since the accident. What accident? Mm? The nightmail pitched
right over into the valley below a guide fifty feet more,
just at the worst bitter road in the whole country. Horrible?
How many lives were lost? All four found dead to

(22:59):
other two died next morning. How long is it since
this happened? Just nine year near the sign post, you say,
I will bear it in mine. Good night, good night, sir, thank'e.
Jacob pocketed his half crown, it, made a faint pretense
of touching his hat, and then trutched back the way

(23:19):
he came. I watched the light of his lantern till
it quite disappeared, and then turned to pursue my way alone.
This was no longer matter of the slightest difficulty, for
despite the dead darkness ahead, the line of stone fence
showed distinctly enough against the pale gleam of the snow.
How silent it seemed now, with only my footsteps to

(23:40):
listen to, How silent and how solitary. A strange, disagreeable
sense of loneliness stole over me. I walked faster, I
hummed a fragment of a tomb. I cast up my
enormous sums in my head and accumulated them at compound interest.
I did my best, in short to forget the startling

(24:01):
speculations to which I had just been listening, and to
some extent I succeeded. Meanwhile, the night air seemed to
become colder and colder. Though I walked fast, I found
it impossible to keep myself warm. My feet were like ice.
I lost sensation in my hands and grasped my gun mechanically.

(24:23):
I even breathed with difficulty, as though instead of traversing
a quiet north country highway, I was scaling the uppermost
heights of some gigantic out This last symptom became presently,
so distressing that I was forced to stop a few
minutes and lean against the stone fence. As I did so,
I chanced to look back up the road, and there,

(24:45):
to my infinite relief, I saw a distant point of light,
like the gleam of an approaching lantern. I at first
concluded that jacobed retraced his steps and followed me. But
even as the conjecture presented itself, a second light flashed
into I, a light evidently parallel with the first, and
approaching at the same rate of motion. It needed no

(25:06):
second thought to show me that these must be the
carriage lamps of some private vehicle. Though it seemed strange
that any private vehicle should take a roade professedly disused
and dangerous. There could be no doubt, however, of the fact,
for the lamps grew larger and brighter every moment, and
I even fancied I could already see the dark outline

(25:28):
of the carriage between them. It was coming up very
fast and quite noiselessly, the snow being nearly a foot
deep under the wheels, and now the body of the
vehicle became distinctly visible behind the lamps. It looked strangely lofty.
A sudden suspicion flashed upon me. Was it possible that

(25:50):
I had passed the country roads in the dark without
observing the signpost? And this could be the very coach
which I had come to meet. No need to ask
myself that question second time, for here it came round
the mind of the road guard and driver, one outside passenger,
and four steaming grays, all wrapped in a soft haze
of light, through which the lamps blazed out like a

(26:12):
pair of fiery meteors. I jumped forward, waved my hat
and shouted. The mail came down at full speed and
passed me. For a moment I feared that I had
not been seen or heard, But it was only for
a moment. The coachman pulled up. The guard, muffled to
the eyes and capes and comforters, and apparently sound asleep

(26:33):
in the rumble. Neither answered my hail, nor made the
slightest effort to dismount. The outside passenger did not even
turn his head. I opened the door for myself and
looked in. There were but three travelers inside, so I
stepped in, shut the door, slipped into the vacant corner,
and congratulated myself on my good fortune. The atmosphere of

(26:55):
the coach seemed, if possible, colder than that of the
outer air, and was pervaded by a singularly damp and
disagreeable smell. I looked round at my fellow passengers. They
were all three men, and all silent. They did not
seem to be asleep, but each leaned back in his

(27:16):
corner of the vehicle, as if absorbed in his own reflections.
I attempted to open a conversation. How intensely cold it
is to night, I said, addressing my opposite neighbor. He
lifted his head, looked at me, but made no reply.
The windsor, I added, seems to have begun in earnest,

(27:38):
although the corner in which he sat was so dim
that I could distinguish none of his features very clearly.
I saw that his eyes were still turned full upon me,
and yet he answered never a word. At any other
time I should have felt and perhaps expressed some annoyance,
But at the moment I felt too ill to do either.

(28:00):
The icy coldness of the night air had struck a
chill to my very marrow, and the strange smell inside
the coach was affecting me with an intolerable nausea. I
struggled from head to foot, and, turning to my left
hand neighbor, asked if he had any objection to an
open window. He neither spoke nor stirred. I repeated the

(28:24):
question somewhat more loudly, but with the same result. Then
I lost my patient and let the sash down. As
I did so, the leather strap broke in my hand,
and I observed that the glass was covered with a
thick coat of mildew, the accumulation apparently of years. My

(28:45):
attention being thus drawn to the condition of the coach,
I examined it more narrowly, and saw, by the uncertain
light of the outer lamps that it was in the
last stage of dilapidation. Every part of it was not
only out of repair, but in a condition of decay.
The sashes splintered at a touch, The leather fittings were

(29:06):
crusted over with mold and literally rotting from the woodwork.
The floor was almost breaking away beneath my feet. The
whole machine, in short, was foul with damp, and had
evidently been dragged from some outhouse in which it had
been moldering away for years to do another day or
two of duty on the road. I turned to the

(29:28):
third passenger, whom I had not yet addressed, and hazarded
one more remark. This coach, I said, is indeplorable condition.
The regular mail, I suppose is under repair. He moved
his head slowly and looked me in the face, without
speaking a word. I shall never forget that look while

(29:51):
I live. I turned cold at heart under it. I
turned cold at heart even now as I recall it.
His eye eyes glowed with a fiery, unnatural luster. His
face was livid as the face of a corpse. His
bloodless lips were drawn back, as if in the agony
of death, and showed the gleaming teeth between the words

(30:16):
that I was about to utter died upon my lips
in a strange horror, A dreadful horror came about me.
My sight had by this time become used to the
gloom of the coach, and I could see with tolerable distinctness.
I turned to my opposite neighbor. He too was looking
at me, with the same startling pallor in his face

(30:37):
and the same stony glitter in his eyes. I passed
my hand across my brow, and I turned to the
passenger on the seat beside my own, and saw, Oh Heaven,
how shall I describe what I saw? I saw that
he was no living man, that none of them were
living men like myself. A pale phosphorescent light in the

(30:58):
light of putrefaction, and played upon their awful faces, upon
their hair, dank with the dews of the grave, upon
their clothes, earth stained and dropping to pieces, upon their hands,
which were as the hands of corpses long buried. Only
their eyes, their terrible eyes, were living, and those eyes

(31:18):
were all turned menacingly upon me. A shriek of terror,
a wild, unintelligible cry for help and mercy, burst from
my lips, as I flung myself against the door and
strove in vain to open it. In that single instant,
brief and vivid, as a landscape beheld in the flash
of summer lightning, I saw the moon shining down through
a rift of stormy cloud, the ghastly sign post rearing

(31:43):
its warning finger by the wayside, the broken paraphet, the
plunging horses, the black gulf below. Then the coach reeled
like a ship at sea. Then came a mighty crash,
a sense of crushing pain, and then darkness. It seemed
as if years had gone by when I awoke one

(32:04):
morning from a deep sleep and found my wife watching
by my bedside. I will pass over the scene that
ensued and give you, in half a dozen words, the
tale she told me, with tears of Thanksgiving. I had
fallen over a precipice close against the junction of the
old coach road and the new, and had only been

(32:27):
saved from certain death by lighting upon a deep snowdrift
that had accumulated at the foot of the rock beneath.
In this snow drift, I was discovered at daybreak by
a couple of shepherds, who carried me to the nearest
shelter and brought a surgeon to my aid. The surgeon
found me in a state of raving delirium, with the

(32:47):
broken arm and a compound fracture of the skull. The
letters in my pocket book showed my name and address.
My wife was summoned to nurse me, and thanks to
youth and a fine constitution, I came out of danger
at last. The place of my fall, I need scarcely say,
was precisely that at which a frightful accident had happened

(33:09):
to the North Mail nine years before. I never told
my wife the fearful events which I have just related
to you. I told the surgeon who attended me, but
he treated the whole adventure as a mere dream born
of the fever in my brain. We discussed the question
over and over again, until we found that we could

(33:30):
discuss it with temper no longer, and then we dropped it.
Others may form a conclusions they please. I know that
twenty years ago I was the fourth passenger inside that
phansom coach. End of the Phantom Coach