If what he says be true, as of course it is--for who shall presume to doubt Tom O' the Dingle's veracity ?--whosoever fills the office of turnpike-keeper in Wild Wales should be a person of very considerable nerve.
"We were in the habit of seeing," says Tom, "plenty of passengers going through the gate without paying toll; I mean such things as are called phantoms or illusions--sometimes there were hearses and mourning coaches, sometimes funeral processions on foot, the whole to be seen as distinctly as anything could be seen, especially at night-time.

I saw myself on a certain night a hearse go through the gate whilst it was shut; I saw the horses and the harness, the postillion, and the coachman, and the tufts of hair such as are seen on the tops of hearses, and I saw the wheels scattering the stones in the road, just as other wheels would have done.
Then I saw a funeral of the same character, for all the world like a real funeral; there was the bier and the black drapery.

I have seen more than one.

If a young man was to be buried there would be a white sheet, or something that looked like one--and sometimes I have seen a flaring candle going past.
"Once a traveller passing through the gate called out to me: 'Look! yonder is a corpse candle coming through the fields beside the highway.' So we paid attention to it as it moved, making apparently towards the church from the other side.

Sometimes it would be quite near the road, another time some way into the fields.