St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1884-10-30
A MYSTERIOUS MURDER.
The Witness of the Crime ReroaTs 1T Atte,
Fiftu YenTS.

The Witness of the Crime ReroGIs 1t after
Fifty Years.
The writer, then junior in a firm in Lon
don, of which he is now the head, came to
Penzance in September, 1884, to arrange
terms among local tin smelters. He left
PenZance one evening to visit friend in St.
Just, which is about six miles from Pen
zance. On the way there, in a lonely part
of the road, he met two men, when he heard
one say: THAT'S him." while the other as
serted, ''No, it is not" They again faced
each other, when the two men said they had
taken him for another person. Almost i'm
mediately man approached from the direc-
ton of st. Just, and the writer called his at
tention to the suspicious character of the two
men. The man who said he was a mine
agent, laughed at his fears and went on his
way. He had only proceeded about couple
of hundred yards when he was seized
with nervous tremors. His legs re-
fused to support him, and he
fell in the middle of the road, but thought it
better not to stay there, and so proceeded on
hands and knees across the road, scrambled
up small bank, and found himself upon a
common. He dragged himself to q heather
covered strip between two clumps of furze,
and threw himself at length and closed his
eyes. After a little time he looked around
and the moonlight revealed to kim a newly
made mound. Hearing two shots fired he
crouched and waited, and he saw to men
Just after bearing the body of third man.
To quote his letter:
''Onee more a thrill Of horror ran through
IN, 4bov e.,
grave, almost touching my feet as they
moved past. Then they turned TO the right
and threw the body into the pit The corpse
in the grave, the two men began to fill it up
They had not lowered the mound many
inches when one of the men discovered me.
They bounced upon me and demanded what
l was doing there. / explained, but all to
no purpose. The same pit will do for him.
Yes, shoot him. No, cut his
throat stop, I'll load my pistol
again; don't leave any marks of blood
about; push him into the pit first, and cut
his throat afierward.' These were the hor-
rible threats, accompanied by frightful i'm
precautions, which greeted me. Said one Of
the men TO me again 'We have decided 10
bury you alive; slip off your clothes; it's
hardly worth while burying that good suit of
clothes of yours; it will do for one Of us. I
pleaded my youth, my accidental and uu-
premeditated presence, my newly made wife
and only child, and this at last seemed to
touch the hearts of the brutes. WELL said
one, we will spare your life on condition
that you swear, as you hope for heaven and
the salvation Of your wife, child and friends
you shall swear it, too, on the point of this
knife and the muzzle Of this pistol-that
That you have seen this night you will never
pax of or divulge to any human being for
space of fifty years from this day, when we
4ai all be as this, at the same time kicking
.uto the grave clod Of light colored clayey
soil did swear most solemnly. / bought
my life on that lonely heath of West Pen
with. have kept my promise. 1t is a little
over fifty years. was then twenty-six years
of age, SO you see l am an old man now
Those men were middle-aged, from forty-hye
to fifty, at the time.''
On his revisiting the spot he writes:
LAS ! approached the fatal spot the road
had seemed entirely unaltered. / solemnly
believe that 1 crept through the very gap in
the low hedge of earth which still protects
the croft: that stood between the seIf-same
clusters of furze which formed nv bed very
nearly my bed of death-and peep-hole as
the murderers hid the result OF their aecursed
crime, and that knelt on the undisturbed
grave where their victims bones are now
mere dust After half q century / knelt
again, not TO impIore mercy OF man, as l
did then, but Of God, lest unEittingly have
sinned in keeping an extorted pledge, aud,
to save myselffrom harm, have reluctantly
shielded heinOus criminals. / did not at The
time hear Of any person connected with the
district being missed, ror have ever learned
anything that would help to throw light on
the name Of the victim or the motive 1or the
murder.'i-The Cor1istmGR.