"A Banshee!" said the little man; "what's that?"

"A peculiar sort of supernatural creature that is common here, sir. She
was squatted down on one side of the road, and my mare shied at her, and
being a spirited little thing, she attempted to jump the ditch and missed
it in the dark."

"Jump a ditch, with a gig after her, sir?" said the little man.

"Oh, common enough to do that here, sir; she'd have done it easy in the
daylight, but she could not measure her distance in the dark, and bang she
went into the ditch: but it's a trifle, after all. I am generally run over
four or five times a year."

"And you alive to tell it!" said the little man, incredulously.

"It's hard to kill us here, sir, we are used to accidents."

"Well, the worst accident I ever heard of," said one of the citizens,
"happened to a friend of mine, who went to visit a friend of his on a
Sunday, and all the family happened to be at church; so on driving into
the yard there was no one to take his horse, therefore he undertook the
office of ostler himself, but being unused to the duty, he most
incautiously took off the horse's bridle before unyoking him from his gig,
and the animal, making a furious plunge forward--my friend being before
him at the time--the shaft of the gig was driven through his body, and
into the coach-house gate behind him, and stuck so fast that the horse
could not drag it out after; and in this dreadful situation they remained
until the family returned from church, and saw the awful occurrence. A