Our first impression suggested that it was some time-honoured memorial of the past—the carriage, it might be, in which a bride and bridegroom had made their home-coming under auspices of exceptional promise. But a second glance through the broken semicircular skylight told rather of intentional neglect or indifference. The plaster of the coach-house, where it still clung to the lath, had broken out into patches of mouldiness, defiant of the first principles of cleanliness, while an army of spiders, who must have worked unmolested for years, had tied the carriage to the walls and floor with a net-work of dirt-begrimed strands. “What on earth is it? and why is it kept here?” asked Ronald of the groom. “I shall get the uncle to have it broken up and burned: it’s only filling the place with moths and insects.” “Don’t you do nought of the kind, Master Ronald,” said the coachman, lowering his voice to a whisper. “That carriage has been driven up to these very doors by old Nick himself, or one or other of his coachmen. Aye, you may laugh. But it’s true enough, and not so long ago neither. They’d forgotten—had your aunt and uncle—that it was here in the stable at all: it must have been here years before they bought the place—till _he_ came and drove it round to the front door one night, all mouldy and ramshackled just as you see it now.” “Do tell us, Frampton, about it. I’ll promise not to laugh.” “Well, ’twas the night before we were starting for the South of France, and I was going with them to look after the horses they were to hire in Paris. The house had been full of visitors for Christmas, but most of them had gone the day before, and the rest of them were to leave along with us. “It was in the middle of the night, though they never noticed the true time, when they heard, both of them, a carriage drive up to the front door. “They were fairly puzzled what it could mean, as they expected no visitors, least of all at that time of night. Your aunt got up first and then called your uncle. And there, full in the moonlight, stood that identical carriage, and the coachman was a skellington—dressed in black and weepers, for all the world like an undertaker at a funeral. He turned his eyes—or what should have been his eyes—full upon them both. And then your aunt went faint, and I believe your uncle did no better. Anyhow, when they came back to their senses, carriage and coachman were gone.” “And what did it mean, Frampton?” “Well, that’s more than I can tell you, Master Ronald. It’s fairly puzzled all of us. I’m sure I’ve bothered my head times over to try and piece it together, seeing it meant no harm to them, but only to a lot of folk they’d never seen or heard of.” “How did that come about?”