Page:Peterruggmissing00austrich.djvu/49

Rh spell of enchantment; for what appeared to me last night cannot be a real transaction, otherwise a turnpike gate is a useless thing." "I do not believe in witchcraft or enchantment," said I, "and if you will relate circumstantially what happened last night, I will endeavor to account for it by natural means." "You may recollect the night was uncommonly dark. Well, sir, just after I had closed the gate for the night, down the turnpike, as far as my eye could reach, I beheld what at first appeared to me, two armies engaged. The report of the musketry, and the flashes of their firelocks were incessant and continuous. As this strange spectacle approached me with the fury of a tornado, the noise increased, and the appearance rolled on in one compact body over the surface of the ground. The most splendid fireworks rose out of the earth and encircled this moving spectacle. In the midst of this luminous configuration sat a man, distinctly to be seen, in a miserable looking chair drawn by a black horse. The divers tints of the rainbow, the most brilliant dyes that the sun lays on the lap of spring, could not display a more beautiful,