Every year, on Christmas night, around midnight, a great coach drawn by four black horses drives down the steep mountain on which the castle of Hoh-Rappoltstein stands. It rolls through the town’s main street, past the shooting house, and on along the road toward Guémar.
No one sits inside it, and no coachman guides the horses. After two o’clock, it always returns by the same road, waking the sleepers with its uncanny rattling.
A boy, who once had an errand to run late at night in the neighbouring village of Guémar, met the coach on his way back. He was tired and shivering violently in the cold night, so he asked to be allowed to climb in. He received no answer, but the horses stood still; the coach door opened and closed again once the boy had stepped inside.
He must have fallen asleep. After his parents had searched for him in vain all through the night, he was found the following morning sitting in the branches of a tall poplar, chattering with cold. How he had got up there, he could tell no one.
