The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-01-21
AN HISTORIC MYSTERY.
Thirty Years With a Hangman'S Rope
About Her Neck.
A saxson Prototype of Dickens Miss
Evesham-Gloomy Fate of a Court


Evesham-Gloomy Fate of a Court
Beauty.
From the Providence Journal.
Circumstances have of late renewed in
terest in the celebrated story of the Man
in the Iron Mask, and this and the case
of the imprisoned and mind-repressed
boy, Caspar Hauser, are unquestionably
the most widely discussed mysteries of
| identification in history. They are of
course peculiarly fascinating in the room
they furnish for the play of the magma
tion and invention, too, it is to be fancied,
have been freely exercised upon them.
But they by no means stand alone; his
| tory is full of these puzzles, and the ro-
nance of some of them has even tinged
| the prosalc materialiSm of our own time.
| The story, for instance, of the Lost Dau-
| phin of France, and of the claim to that
| distinction of the Indian-bred boy, Eleazer
! Williams, who was early in the century
| brought for his education to the pretty
little Massachusetts village of Long
meadow, is one of very great interest and
| charm, and it is still possible to hear 1t
| from the lips of men who link his life
with our own. No less strange, and still
nearer to our own day, is the story of the
life which went out in Germany in the
| spring VI loDD n WblIu anu SOllDTb bdle
| it is, and little known; and perhaps for
that reason some portions of it may DO
| worth retelling.
The river Weisseritz runs through the
| pretty little valley of Plauensche Grund
within easy walking distance of Dresden
At one end of the valley, on marshy
! ground, it's garden walls running close TO
the river and even along its front, there
| stood at the time mentioned a house Of
color, with roof of murky red. For thirty
years no ray of light had entered it,
Heavy black shutters, deliberately barred,
| closed every window. Black, too, were
the bars, the doors, the mouldings and
the cornices; and black also were the
walls about the grounds, although they
had been allowed to be overgrown with a
wild tangle of bramble and creeping vines
The garden had grown to forest of oaks
and other trees and underbrush. The
whole aspect of the place, indeed, was
one of long neglect and desertion. The
| villagers told queer tales of its haunted
chambers, Of course, but these were no
more incredible than the stories of sim
| pie fact which they were able to narrate
For sounds of life were heard within
the grounds of the Plauen Palais, and
through a small door in the wall between
the garden and the grounds of an adjacent
restaurant IL was seen that the house was
! guarded by men of repelling mien. who
| patrolled the grounds by night, while
numerous tierce-looking hounds hung
around the doors and made their home in
the lower passageway.
In the upper floor of this grewsome
| structure an old woman lived alone and
had lived for thirty years, like Miss Ewes
| ham in her laces and wedding finery
| Even in her isolation from the world, but
more lonely, with more tragic memories,
and without the hollow mockery Of
| jewels and old age (the Grain Kielman-
! segge was Sc when she died) she pre-
served the remnants of a once dazzling
: beauty, but her face was hard, and the
eyes bright, restless acute, though speak
| ing of a mind still alert and faculties un-
I impaired. She wore the white muslin
cap of old age, with voluminous frill in
front, and her dress of black and gray
loosely wrapped her form and completely
| concealed its proportions.
Regularly once week the door of her
room opened quietly and man with face
securely masked entered unbidden. He
bowed low before. and without speaking
| a word advanced close to her chair
! lightly moved the wrappings about her
neck, looked a moment, and then bowling
low again, silently withdrew. What he
saw was a hangman's rope fastened
around her neck, its ends carefully con-
cealed within her dress, and the man
was the public executiOner from Dresden.
This is the mystery of the Grain Kiel-
mansegge. Whether the moose and the
oxecutioner were a self-imposed penance,
inflicted in the vain hope of atoning for
some crime committed long ago, or
whether in refinement of cruelty she had
been constrained by her judges thus TO
live on bearing the badge Of infamy, can
only be surmised. Nor can we tell with
certainty what the crimeT thus terribly
punished was. But whatever the expla-
nation, the picture thus presented to the
mind of a brilliant woman, doomed 10
eternal night, with the clutch of the glib
bet about her neck sleeping or waking,
an ignominious death always before her
eyes, and the murmur Of ribald throng
in her ears, is one from which the stout
est heart must shrink in terror What
ever ingenuity or deviltry conceived this