I was thinking more about this on my walk tonight (woe is me)--I think it's the word from or to that changes things. Ww had a good point about ordinals. consider a set of 5 steps: a b c d e. a is the first step, c is the third step, e is the last. you could also make the case that c is the third last and d is the second last. but when you throw "from" in there, you are implying a count (to my way of thinking) so that c is second from (the) last.