"Just about seven years agone--why, you must remember the circumstances
as well as I do--there was a man druv over from I can't say where, for
that was never exact-ly hascertained,--but from the Henfield direction,
in a light cart. He went to the Station Inn, and throwing the reins to
John Thomas, the ostler, bade him take the trap and bring it round to
meet the 9.30 train, by which he calculated to return from Brighton.
John Thomas said as 'ow the stranger was quite unbeknown to him, and
that he looked as though he 'ad some matter on his mind when he went to
the train; he was a queer sort of a man, with thick grey hair and beard,
and delicate white 'ands, jist like a lady's. The trap was round to the
station door as hordered by the arrival of the 9.30 train. The ostler
observed then that the man was ashen pale, and that his 'ands trembled
as he took the reins, that the stranger stared at him in a wild
habstracted way, and that he would have driven off without tendering
payment had he not been respectfully reminded that the 'orse had been
given a feed of hoats. John Thomas made a hobservation to the gent
relative to the wheel which was loose, but that hobservation met with no
corresponding hanswer. The driver whipped his 'orse and went off. He
passed the turnpike, and was seen to take the Brighton road hinstead of
that by which he had come. A workman hobserved the trap next on the
downs above Clayton chalk-pits. He didn't pay much attention to it, but
he saw that the driver was on his legs at the 'ead of the 'orse. Next,
morning, when the quarrymen went to the pit, they found a shattered
tax-cart at the bottom, and the 'orse and driver dead, the latter with
his neck broken. What was curious, too, was that an 'andkerchief was
bound round the brute's heyes, so that he must have been driven over the
edge blindfold. Hodd, wasn't it? Well, folks say that the gent and his
tax-cart pass along the road every hevening after the arrival of the
9.30 train; but I don't believe it; I ain't a bit superstitious--not I!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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