Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-01-17
A GHOSTLY FIDDLER
The Unseen ApparitiOn Which Haunts
an Alabama Locality.
RETRIBUTION FOR A MURDER
Supposed to Have Some Connection With
the Uncanny Music.
A STORY OF A DESERTED GOLD FIELD

A1D" D"AhDoflLLc, abAss cdu' 4Os-1O"A
in the abandoned Arbacoochee gold fields.
20 miles south of this place, stands the ruins
of log cabin, where, years ago, a mysteri-'
Gus and bloody crime was committed. The
place is haunted, but not by visible ghosts.
No white-robed phantom forms walk, with
noiseless tread, across the broken, vine-
covered floor of the old cabin. No specter
lights CLEAN through the one window, or
across the rotten threshold of the shutterless
door. The gnost is heard, not seen, and no
one who has once heard the sounds that
come from the old cabin at midnight will
ever again doubt the existence of spooks.
The ghostly sounds are the music of Q
violin. The playing is not that OF master,
but it is good, and it is soft and low as
though the soul of the player was in sympa-
thy with his music. Night after night for
many years, this ghostly violin played by
ghostly hands has awoke the echoes of the
| deserted cabin. AFirst there is heard thum-
ming on the strings, tuning of the iustru.
ment, and then the bow is drawn across the
| strings when they are all in perfect har-
monv. A sweet Scottishlo love ballad of old
en- days is first played then comes the
familiar music of the Scots Highland
fling.
Not just One-Night Stand.
Then there is brief pause, another
night air softly floats the music of that sweet
old Scottish song, Within Mile o. Edin-
boro Town." One stanzs is finished, an
| other is begun, the music is softer, sweeter
than before, when suddenly it stops in the
middle of a bar and is heard no more until
the following night, when the same pro-
| gramme is repeated.
OF course, there is story attached to the
old cabin, story to explain the ghostly
rio md aird fe L.
when the Arbacoochee gold fields were filed
with prospectors, two old California miners
| turned up there one dav. Their names
| were Martin Burke and Donald Mcleod.
They were past middle life and had been
mining IN California and Nevada for 20
years with Indifferent success. Mcleod was
| Scotchman, and to the newly discovered
gold field be brought an old violin, which
he never tired Of playing when asked to per-
form.
The two miners rented the cabin and went
to work prospecting among the hills. They
had been there only few weeks when other
| miners and prospectors noticed they went
out early every morning, always going in
the same direction, and did not return until
night. Many suspected they had struck il
rich somewhere in the hills, but as no one
else had been able TO find gold in paying
| quantities it was finally agreed that Burke
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blind lead.
| A Mysterious Murder.
| One day the two men were missed. Next
| day they were still missing, and the cabin
was visited. The dead body OF Mcleod was
| lying on the floor of the cabin. He had
been shot through the head while sitting in
front of the fire playing his violin. When
he fell his fingers stiffened on his violin,
and when in removing it from
/ he Aaa1 hands h. har
drawn across the strings by ac.
cident, and the old fiddle emitted
wall for the dead musician which, it is
stated, made those who heard il shudder.
Burke was gone, and naturally he was sus-
pected of the murder of his partner. There
seemed but one reasonable theory Of the
crime-that the two men had made r1ch
find, that Burke had murdered his compan-
ion and taking all the gold had fed. This
theory was generally accepted, but as there
was no positive evidence against Burke, no
effort was made to find him.
None dared to charge him with the murder
of Mcleod, because they had no evidence
Burke spent his DAYS and nights in the one
saloon OF the little town. About that time
the ghostly violin playing in the old cabin
was first heard, and one night a frightened
countryman was giving an account of 1t in
the saloon at Arbocoochee. Burke heard
deadly pale, and, staggering to the bar,
called for glass of liquor. From that
night Burke drank more and more, and in 8
week he was on the verge of the jim-jams.
The Day of Retribution.
Late one night he reeled up to the bar
and called for liquor. A crowd of country
men were drinking in back room and ons
ofthem was playing violin. Burke paid
no attention to tine music at first, but Just
as he raised the glass to his lips the coun-
try fiddler began to play "Within Mile o.
Edinboro Town." The glass of liquor fell
from Burke's trembling fingers, and, with
gasp, he fell to tine floor. The look of terror
on the mans face was one never to be for
gotten. He fell all in heap, and in five
minutes was dead. The doctors said he died
of heart failure caused BY drink and sudden
| excitement.
After Burke's death the murder of Nc
| Leod was talked of more than ever. 1t de-
yeloped that the fiddle the countryman was
playing in the back room of the saloon
when Burke fell dead was the same instru-
ment Donald Mcleod WIS playing the night
he was murdered. Putting this and that
trgether the people who knew the facts
reasoned that Mcleod had been murdered
by Burke while PLAYING his favorite tune,
| within a Mile O. EdInboro Town." After
ten years some strange impulse had drawn
| the murderer back to the scene o. his crime.
| He heard and recognized the same music
that must have been ringing in his ears
| through all his ten years of wandering, and
| then death overlook him as suddenly as he
had sent the grim messenger to the heart Of
| Donald Mcleod.
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