"On the Brighton Road." Richard Middleton.

Review: Tramp awakens in the snow and begins his trek on the road to London, meets a young boy of eighteen years, who has been walking the road for six years. He had run away from home a number of times and the police had returned him, but now he has no home to be returned to. The boy has a terrible cough and begins to collapse when the tramp catches him. No where to take him A car flashes up. Driver identifies himself as a doctor, diagnosis the boy’s problem as pneumonia, offers to take both to the infirmary. The boy gets in. The tramp declines and continues to walk.

Two miles beyond Reigate, he sees the boy on the road ahead of him again. When the tramp catches up to him, the boy says “I’ll come a bit of the way with you if you don’t walk too fast. It’s a bit lonesome walking this time of day.”

“But the pneumonia,” exclaims the tramp.

“I died at Crawly this morning,” says the boy.

Famous Ghost Stories. Ed. Bennett Cerf. New York: The Modern Library. Random House, inc. 1944.