A winter rain had set in, just at dusk, as the great lumbering five-horse coach (three wheelers and two leaders) from Hightown entered the straggling outkirts of Logansville. The post boy on the boot blew his long horn vociferously, waking the echoes up Summer Creek, then back again, clear to the “Grandfather Pine” at Chadwick’s Gap.
A whimsical old German, who worked at Jacob Eilert’s pottery, picked up his old tin horn that he used to blow as a boy when wolves or Indians were about, and answered the clarion in cracked, uncertain notes. Lights glimmered in cabin windows, and many a tallow dip, fat lamp or rushlight was held aloft to get a good view of the coach as it swirled along through the mud, and its crowded company. Everybody was standing up, buttoning their coats and gathering together their luggage, as the big, clumsy vehicle checked up under the swinging sign, on which was painted the well-loved features of the Father of His Country.
The old landlord, his wife and the hostlers and stable boys and household help were outside to assist the travelers to alight and show them into the comfortable glow of the lobby.
“When do you start out in the morning?” all were asking of the rosy-cheeked driver, although the hour for continuing the journey west from Logansville was printed in big letters on the rate card at the posting office at Hightown, as “Sharp, 6.00 A. M.”
In the candle-lit lobby, by a blazing fire of maple logs, the travelers surveyed one another, the landlord and their surroundings. They were an even dozen in number, nine men and three women. Some of the men were hunters and had their Lancaster rifles with them; the others commercial travelers. The women were also engaged in business pursuits.
The stage was the sole means of penetrating into the back country, and the canals and the Pennsylvania Central Railroad (now known as the Main Line) the only methods of crossing the Keystone State in those early days.
A good supper was served–hickory smoked ham and eggs, hot cakes and native grown maple syrup, and plentiful libations of original Murray “Sugar Valley” whiskey, which put the huntsmen and the drummers in capital humor. After the meal they brought out their pipes and sat in groups about the fire in the great, low-ceilinged room. The three women, who were middle-aged and of stolid appearance, sat together, talking in undertones.
All at once, when the fire suddenly spluttered up, one of the drummers, a big, black-bearded fellow, said loudly enough so that all could hear–he was evidently trying to make the conversation general–"In the mountains they say that it’s a sign of a storm when the fire jumps up like that."
“And I guess we’re having it,” said another of the travelers, a little man with gray side whiskers, dryly.
Then, as wide shadows fell across the floor, another of the men, a hunter, ventured the remark: “Do you believe in ghosts?”