Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1872-07-27

Indians; but with these they never
came up, nor was it ever known from
where these willy redskins came, and
whittier they went.
Then Golf became prey to melan
cholv, of a kind that had danger in it
and none of us were sorry when he
made arrangements for selling out his
little property here having done which
he went away as silently as he had
come. giving no hint as to his move
ments, and bidding nobody farewell.
Years passed on, and many changes
took place in these parts, which be.
came settled by degrees, and took on
more with civilization than they used
to do. We used to get hold of news
| papers now once in a while, and the
part of these most eagerly read by us
was that which brought us in contact,
so to speak, with the great cities, which
few of us ever had chance of visiting.
and, therefore, wanted all the more to
hear about.
One day the clerk in the store was
reading out to lot of US, from a New
York paper that had Just come to hand.
There was an account in it of strange,
lone man, who had died in a tavern in
that city, leaving no trace of his name
or belongings, but only a written paper,
containing n confession that made some
of us start, for it seemed to throw light
upon the dark things of which | have
lust been telling you.
This confession, much of which was
blotted out, as if the writer had repent
ed of making all known, amounted to
about this: The writer, who did not
give his name, was living at one time
he said, in certain backwoods settle
ment, of which he did not give the To-
cality. While there, he had quarrel
with a man. who was sometimes en-
ploycd by him, and they were going to
fight it out with weapons, but were sep
arated by some neighbors. Shortly
after this, the writer, so he said, heard
that deer had been seen in hollow
| of the woods, near by where he lived,
and he went out with his rifle to look
for it, After Il while, he saw the deer
rlove among some thick branches of a
fallen tree, and drawing q bead upon it,
fired. Nothing stirring, he went up to
where he supposed the deer had fallen,
| and, to his horror, saw stretched out
before him dead the man with whom
he had quarreled, in the morning. Un-
| fortunately, the man wore deer-skin
| cap. which led to the mistake.
| Then remorse and fear overwhelmed
| the slayer, for he knew that, viewing
his late quarrel with the dead man, all
the neighbors would swear that he had
murdered him in spite, instead of by
mischance. To remove all traces of the
crime, then, he bethought. himself of
| willy plan. When the tophamper has
been cut away from a great tree that
| has been blown down by the wind, with
its roots partly in the ground, such is
| the spring of the roots, as he well
| knew, that the part of the tree left at,
| tached to them is .jerked back into its
place with sudden snap, the roots fall
| ing into their old grooves as nice as
| button, without leaving a trace of their
having been torn up. Throwing the
dead man into the cavity then, he went
| for an AK which he kept in hollow
tree, not far Oft. With this, he cut
| tn; ough the tree at distance of some
| twenty feet from the roots, when, no
sooner had he jumped away clear from
it than back it spr@ng, and the dead
mans grave and monument were there
| in less time than it takes to tell about
| them. Then, the writer said, he carved
| Il cross upon the tree with his AK. And
that was all of the manuscript that was
legible.
Before the reading of this confession
was quite finished, three of the party,
i was one of them myself-had sprung
to their feet, for the whole thing flash
aI ilS of fnha of thn
| confession must have been Golf, and no
one else. The person who had bought
| out Goff, in clearing away the woods
| in the hollow already mentioned, no
ticed headless old baswood tree, with
a cross carved upon it, and this he left
standing, and in course of time it
threw out young branches and leaves at
the top, and became landmark among
the surrounding stumps.
For this tree, then, crowd of us
made with all speed, and after an hours
hard work, with pick-axes and shovels,
we disinterred the remains of man.
1t was mere skeleton, with few rags
upon it, and the name of Morgan was
yet to be seen carved on the stock of
the rusty old rifle that lay by it. This
we expected, but what was our horror
on searching the cavity further to find
in it also the skeleton of child, GER
tain marks yet observable on the cloth
ing of which showed that it was all that
remained of Gotf~s boy.
1t would have been far to go to find
coroner; and what good would cor
oner have been, anyhow, since we had
all ma ie up our minds about the facts
of this sad case? What we all agreed
upon, was that While Gotf was engaged
IN cutting the tree, his boy stole down
nnperceived, and thinking that he saw
his friend Morgan asleep, at the loot of
the great mass of upright roots, nestled
IN y him just as the tree sprang back
ana so met with a terrible death, at the
hands OF his father, who was all un-
conscious that the grave devised by him
for the slain man was also that of his
darling child.
| And SO we buried the remains of the
two at the foot'of the old tree, which
stands as headstone for them to the
present day. And now you know how
it is that very tall stumps of trees are
| sometimes to he seen in the clearings
A Fatal Mistake,
A man and wife living at Long Lake.