W. L. Alden

“ I felt confident that in a few minutes more the car would leave the track and go to everlasting smash, and I remember feeling thankful that I had gone over my accounts just before leaving Jericho, and that nobody could fail to understand them. Just then I thought of the brake. If I should go out on the platform and put the brake on, the engineer would feel the drag on the car and would stop the train, unless he was stark mad. ”

“ I jammed that brake down good and hard, but the brake-chain snapped almost as easy as the bell-cord, and there was an end of that plan for stopping the train. Of course, I knew that a brake-chain sometimes snaps, and you can't prevent it, but it was curious that both the bell-cord and the brake-chain on that car should have been good for nothing.
"Well, I got back into the car again, and I took a middling good drink of the whisky, and it sort of warmed up my courage. I never was a drinking man even in my young days, for I despise a drunkard, especially if he is a railroad man. ”

“ Come to think of it, that there train was wrecked just a year ago last night, and it's probable that her ghost was out for an airing, as you might say.'
"Well, when I came to think the thing over, I came to the conclusion that Hank was right, and that the Pullman with the wet bedclothes, and the rotten bell-cord, was nothing, more or less, than the ghost of a car. However, I didn't say much more to Hank about it at the time, for the less a man talks about seeing ghosts the better it is for him, if he wants to be considered a reliable man. ”

“ A man, whether he is drunk or sober, can't travel seventy miles in three hours, unless he does it on a railroad train.'
"The Superintendent was a mighty smart man, but this conundrum of mine was more than he could answer. So he only smiled, in an aggravating sort of way, and said, 'You'd better take my advice and keep quiet. You know how down the Directors are on any man that drinks too much whisky. If you go about talking of this adventure of yours the chances are you'll lose your place.'
"Just then I happened to think of the piece of bell-cord that I had taken from the car. ”

“ The boys do say that every once in a while there is a train made up of a locomotive, a baggage-car, and a Pullman sleeper that comes down the road a hustlin', and goes off the Muskahoot bridge into the river. I never saw no such train myself, but there's lots of folks living along this road that have seen it, and you'd have hard work to convince 'em that it isn't the ghost of the wrecked train. ”

“ When I got inside I looked around for the passengers, but there wasn't a single one. Neither was there any sign of the nigger porter, who ought to have been there to ask me for my ticket, and to pretend that I was making him a lot of trouble by asking for a bed. ”