grisly aspect, with a head almost bald, and sunken cheeks,
apparently of the feminine gender, though hardly to be classed in
the gentler sex. There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it
had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but stern, which
absolutely made me quiver like calf's-foot jelly. Who could the
phantom be? The most awful circumstance of the affair is yet to
be told: for this ogre, or whatever it was, had a riding habit
like Mrs. Bullfrog's, and also a green silk calash dangling down
her back by the strings. In my terror and turmoil of mind I could
imagine nothing less than that the Old Nick, at the moment of our
overturn, had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats.
This idea seemed the most probable, since I could nowhere
perceive Mrs. Bullfrog alive, nor, though I looked very sharply
about the coach, could I detect any traces of that beloved
woman's dead body. There would have been a comfort in giving her
Christian burial.

"Come, sir, bestir yourself! Help this rascal to set up the
coach," sai the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at
three countrymen at a distance, "Here, you fellows, ain't you
ashamed to stand off when a poor woman is in distress?"

The countrymen, instead of fleeing for their lives, came running
at full speed, and laid hold of the topsy-turvy coach. I, also,
though a small-sized man, went to work like a son of Anak. The
coachman, too, with the blood still streaming from his nose,
tugged and toiled most manfully, dreading, doubtless, that the
next blow might break his head. And yet, bemauled as the poor
fellow had been, he seemed to glance at me with an eye of pity,
as if my case were more deplorable than his. But I cherished a