“I assure you, sir, a friend of my own from town came down here last spring on crutches, and from merely following a light whisky diet and sleeping with his window open, he was able to dance at the race ball in a fortnight; as for this knee of mine, it's a trifle, though it was a bad upset too.”
“How did it happen, sir? Was it your horse—or your harness—or your gig—or—”
“None o' them, sir; it was a Banshee.”
“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 servant was despatched for a doctor, and the shaft was disengaged, and drawn out of the man's body—just at the pit of the stomach; he was laid on a bed, and every one thought of course he must die at once, but he didn't; and the doctor came next day, and he wasn't dead—did what he could for him—and, to make a long story short, sir, the man recovered.”