It was the merest skeleton of a coach.

The cushions had long since been removed, and the leather hangings, where they had not crumbled away, dangled in shreds from the worm-eaten frame.

A load of ghosts and a span of phantom horses to drag them would have made the ghastly thing complete.
Luckily for our undertaking, the stable stood at the top of a very steep hill.

With three boys to push behind, and two in front to steer, we started the old coach on its last trip with little or no difficulty.
Our speed increased every moment, and, the fore wheels becoming unlocked as we arrived at the foot of the declivity, we charged upon the crowd like a regiment of cavalry, scattering the people right and left.

Before reaching the bonfire, to which someone had added several bushels of shavings, Jack Harris and Phil Adams, who were steering, dropped on the ground, and allowed the vehicle to pass over them, which it did without injuring them; but the boys who were clinging for dear life to the trunk-rack behind fell over the prostrate steersman, and there we all lay in a heap, two or three of us quite picturesque with the nose-bleed.
The coach, with an intuitive perception of what was expected of it, plunged into the centre of the kindling shavings, and stopped.