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And if human murderers and their victims have phantasms, why should not animals have phantasms too? Why should not the phenomenon of the cat seen by Mrs. Hartnoll and the Wheelers have been the actual phantasm of an earthbound cat? No amount of reasoning religious or otherwise has as yet annihilated the possibility of all forms of earthly life possessing spirits.
The wheelers were generally large, gaunt and most hideous animals, but the leaders often were ponies who, one could imagine, under happier circumstances might be handsome little horses enough, staunch and willing to the last degree. They knew their driver's cheery voice as well as possible, and answered to every cry and shout of encouragement he gave them as we scampered along.
His hands had grown very unsteady this last year, though he insisted that his general health was as good as ever. As he grew older, he was more depressed by the conviction that his women-folk had added little to the warmth and comfort of the world. Women ought to do that, whatever else they did. He felt apologetic toward the Wheelers and toward his old friends.
Then he came to himself with a gasp understanding instantly what it all meant, why those men had cut loose the horses and ridden away, why the wheelers had plunged forward in that mad run-away race between the bluffs and the river a swarm of Indians were lashing their ponies, spreading out like the sticks of a fan.
He felt that they were discussing his domestic affairs, as, of course, they were. The Royces and the Wheelers, they said, couldn't behave like anybody else, and it was no use their trying. If Claude built the best house in the neighbourhood, he just naturally wouldn't live in it. And if he had a wife at all, it was like him to have a wife in China!
The men dropped the bridles and sprang aside, the long lash cracked like a pistol shot, the leaders, a beautiful pair of grey ponies, perfectly matched, reared, curvetted, pranced about, and then would have dashed off at a wild gallop had not Jack Davis' strong hands, aided by the steadiness of the staider wheelers, kept them in check: and soon brought down to a spirited canter, they led the way out of the town.
Lashly and I were more solid and squat, and we fixed our party up in harness so that the tall men pulled in front while the short, heavy pair dragged as "wheelers." Scott described our sledging here as "exceedingly good going," we were only just starting, that is Lashly and myself, for we two were in harness for more than three months on end.
Many a summer evening have Boy Jim and I lain upon the grass, watching all these grand folk, and cheering the London coaches as they came roaring through the dust clouds, leaders and wheelers stretched to their work, the bugles screaming and the coachmen with their low-crowned, curly-brimmed hats, and their faces as scarlet as their coats.
The middle horses and the wheelers were doing their work: it was not only the leaders that kept the traces taut. It was wonderfully pretty to see them go by: not like a storm but like a smoke. No one could have hit those gunners or those teams. Whether they were on the sky-line or not I could not tell, but at any rate they could have been seen just for that moment from beyond the Sioule.
With him I hunted in every nook and corner of the room, and there being no sign of the key we went out, and to the other side of the coach, and there I heard the coach door open, and the voice cried: "Hold the leader, Jabez; and you, Tom, go to the wheelers' heads. I'll blow in the cursed lock with my pistol."
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