"Oh, there's no wonder the child is sick. We would be sick under the circumstances. _He has seen the phantom coach._" The phantom coach! So that was what the locksmith meant. A phantom coach! I had heard of every kind of phantom but that. Somehow the idea was a thrilling one, or would have been to a nature less practical than mine. "I don't know what you mean," said I. "Some superstition of the place? I never heard of a ghostly appearance of that nature before." "No, I expect not. It belongs to X. I never heard of it beyond these mountains. Indeed, I have never known it to have been seen but upon one road. I need not mention what road, madam. You can guess." Yes, I could guess, and the guessing made me set my lips a little grimly. "Tell me more about this thing," I urged, half laughing. "It ought to be of some interest to me." She nodded, drew her chair a trifle nearer, and impetuously began: "You see this is a very old town. It has more than one ancient country house similar to the one you are now living in, and it has its early traditions. One is, that an old-fashioned coach, perfectly noiseless, drawn by horses through which you can see the moonlight, haunts the highroad at intervals and flies through the gloomy forest road we have christened of late years Lost Man's Lane. It is a superstition, possibly, but you cannot find many families in town but believe in it as a fact, for there is not an old man or woman in the place but has either seen it in the past or has had some relative who has seen it. It passes only at night, and it is thought to presage some disaster to those who see it. My husband's uncle died the next morning after it flew by him on the highway. Fortunately years elapse between its going and coming. It is ten years, I think they say, since it was last seen. Poor little Rob! It has frightened him almost out of his wits." "I should think so," I cried with becoming credulity. "But how came he to see it? I thought you said it only passed at night."