dark and murky as ghost could wish, the coach
and its driver came not.

After a considerable stay, the two clergymen consulted together, and
determined that it was useless to watch any longer for that night, but
that they would meet on some other, when perhaps it might please his
ghostship to appear. Accordingly, with a few words of leave-taking, they
separated, Mr Mills for the rectory, and Mr Dodge, by a short ride
across the moor, which shortened his journey by half a mile, for the
vicarage at Talland.

The vicar rode on at an ambling pace, which his good mare sustained up
hill and down vale without urging. At the bottom of a deep valley,
however, about a mile from Blackadon, the animal became very uneasy,
pricked up her ears, snorted, and moved from side to side of the road,
as if something stood in the path before her. The parson tightened the
reins, and applied whip and spur to her sides, but the animal, usually
docile, became very unruly, made several attempts to turn, and, when
prevented, threw herself upon her haunches. Whip and spur were applied
again and again, to no other purpose than to add to the horse's terror.
To the rider nothing was apparent which could account for the sudden
restiveness of his beast. He dismounted, and attempted in turns to lead
or drag her, but both were impracticable, and attended with no small
risk of snapping the reins. She was remounted with great difficulty, and
another attempt was made to urge her forward, with the like want of
success. At length the eccentric clergyman, judging it to be some
special signal from Heaven, which it would be dangerous to neglect,
threw the reins on the neck of his steed, which, wheeling suddenly
round, started backward in a direction towards the moor, at a pace which
rendered the parson's seat neither a pleasant nor a safe one. In an
astonishingly short space of time they were once more at Blackadon.

By this time the bare outline of the moor was broken by a large black
group of objects, which the darkness of the night prevented the parson
from defining. On approaching this unaccountable appearance, the mare
was seized with fresh fury, and it was with considerable difficulty that
she could be brought to face this new cause of fright. In the pauses of
the horse's prancing, the vicar discovered to his horror the
much-dreaded spectacle of the black coach and the headless steeds, and,
terrible to relate, his friend Mr Mills lying prostrate on the gro