Saved By a Dream

Permit me to introduce the speaker, Mr. Haskill, Western stage driver – a man muscular, and with an eye as keen and unflinching as an eagle.

I drove the stage from New Sharon to Wexford, a distance of thirty miles. In the spring and fall when the travel was bad, I always tarried [overnight] at Wexford, going down to New Sharon the next day, but during the summer I only tarried for fresh horses there, and returned by night. I liked that plan better, for it gave me more leisure to be with my family.

The night of which I am going to tell you, was late in the autumn. It had been a tough storm all the way up – a north easter, just as full of needle points as they could stuff in. Fine hail, you understand, and rain freezing up and frosting your beard, giving one a remarkable if not a pleasant cast of countenance. I had just two passengers up, an old man with very white hair and beard, and a younger man with a slight stoop, and no other peculiarity, that I noticed. I took the mail bags outside with me under the apron.

I wasn’t a particle sorry when the village of Wexford blinked at me with its numerous eyes from crevices in the showers of driving sleet.

Wexford was dignified by the name of village, or South Wexford, more properly, for there was only a meagre collection of five or six houses, and I drove through this place, usually putting up at the half-way house, as it was termed. Beyond this half-way house was Wexford proper, with quite a bustling business air in its one huge smoke-stack, and the row of stores well punctuated with drinking dens. The other stage route ended here, on account of the roughness of the road – the postman jolting the distance between the half-way house and there, to connect the main line. This half-way house had a sorry reputation, on account of the villainous class of roughs that frequented it, to have a game of poker or a bit of a ring fight. I had… Read More