Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1899-08-21
GRIEVANCE OF A DEAD MN
An Uncommon and Hair
ing Adventure in a Lone
ly Farm House.
A VERY LIVELY CORPSE
Chopped His Wife and Her Lover
in the Head With an Axe
and Left Between Two Suns.

The Poison With Which She Had
Dosed Him Did Not Have the De-
sired Effect Had a Bloody Settle
ment With the Guilty Couple
Which Gratified Him.
Forty years or more ago." said a
business man from central Ohio
town, Il was sprightly young adven-
turer of 20 years on my way from the
State of New York to that point in
the midst of the Buckeyes where |
finally stopped and made pretty fair
success of myself. | was poor and
was working my way along from place
to place, without any particular OBJ
ject in view except the remote one of
reaching the Western Reserve, where l
had friends, unless something better
turned up on the way. | had got well
along through western Pennsylvania,
and having gathered in few dollars
extra at one small village | concluded
| would move on to a larger and better
one, fifty miles to the west, through a
very sparsely populated and wild Sec
ton.
otdlttu my JOuI hey dlltT
sun-up one day and made very good pro-
gress until 2 or o'clock, when a storm
arose and | took refuge in a house of
logs and weatherboarding, more pre-
tentious than others | had seen on the
road. but its situation was loneier
than any | had been by that day, and
| could see through the cloudy moon
light that beyond the few acres of
planripu IL npnuninl ptin In,
in the midst of the woods. | knocked,
and the door was opened promptly by
a comely looking woman, who showed
some signs of alarm at my appearance,
though she opened the door so quickly
that | almost thought she had been
looking for me. She did not ask me
to come in, but l told her | was lost
and muddy and tired and hungry and
sleepy, and begged her to accommo-
date me for the night. She said she
was sorry but she couldn't do it. l
asked her how far it was to the next
house, and when she told me it was
three miles | told her she would have
to take me in whether she could or not,
because | was utterly tuckered out
and couldn't walk rod further. She
hesitated a while, and finally said
could stay if | didn't have any objec-
ton to sleeping in a room with a
corpse | wasn't exactly looking for
that sort of a roommate, and the prop
osition startled me some, but | was
tired enough to have slept in morgue,
and | told her it would be all right
if she would brace me up with a bite
of supper.
''At last | opened my eyes wide and
lay watching the figure on the table
between me and the dim light on the
mantel. While so engaged | saw
movement under the sheet, and before
| had time to think of ghosts or real
iZe what was occurring the corpse
pushed the sheet down in front of him
and beckoned for me to come over.
Instantly the corpse sat up listen
ing and | could see it was a well-built
party, not much emaciated for dead
man, thought, and ON the whole, not
bad looking. | listened, too, and
could hear his wife and a man in the
next room talking and finally after
few minutes, they went into the far
room from the other side of the main
apartment in the centre of the house,
where we could not even hear their
voices. Then the man on the table
turned his attention to me, having
thrown aside the sheet and sat up. He
was attired in his best clothes for the
funeral but was in his stocking feet,
and asked me to get his boots out of
the cupboard, which | did. He then
went on to teal me, hurriedly and
scarcely above a whisper, that he had
heard me come in and knew | was a
stranger and he wanted me to stand by
him in case he needed assistance. He
said that the woman was his wife and
the man with her was a neighbor who
wanted to marry her, and that they had
connived together to poison him, the
husband, so as to get him safely out
of the way. The poison worked all
right up to a certain point, but in the
twenty-four hours that he had been
laying out it had lost its grip some
way and he wasn't as dead as they
thought he was. He wasn't feeling
particularly strong and healthy just
then, he said, but he thought he could
have a settlement with the guilty
couple that would be some qualification
to him.
Having explained this much to me,
he asked me to wait until he came
back or should call for me, and taking
an axe that stood in the corner by the
fireplace, he went out of the room.
What happened during the next ten
minutes | do not know, but at the end
of that time the man came back with
out the axe, and, telling me that every
thing was all right, asked me to Join
him in the main room while he got
something to eat and especially some
thing to drink. He asked me to drink
with him, which l did, and also asked
me to hold open his carpet bag while
he filed it with such things as he
might need on a journey. He sug-
gested at the same time that it might
perhaps be just as well if | asked no
questions,
Sixteen months afterward | had
reached Ohio then, the newspapers, not
so enterprising or numerous as they
now are, contained story of the find
ing of two skeletons in lonely house
in a remote section of western Penn
sylvania. and near them an axe with
bloodstains on it.
Il have often wondered why that
man did not set the house on fire
when we left 1t, and l can account for
his not doing SO on no other grount