The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1891-05-23 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE NORTH-EASTERN WEEKLY GAZETTE.  good and merciful feeling within us. I was the first to stoop down to look at the poor, helpless , Irishman, and as I did so the fixed glassy dare of I his eyes arrested my attention. Look at him, lads l' I cried, 'is he not already dead?' Bill ' bent down, out his hand on the prostrate man's heart, and said, Yes, yes, he's dead; so he's saved , us the sin, yet given us the same bother. Get hold, lads, and throw him well out. Come on, Jack,' he said to me, as he grasped the feet of the corpse, 'you need not be so squeamish. We are not murdering him now, but only giving him burial without benefit of the priest. :Such burial I wish all his kind may light upon.' Without furher delay we swung the second body far out into the very place where the other had fallen. Again s shower of red sparks rose and fell, and the blue. lights grew brighter and more in number." At this point the speaker grew faint and asked for a drink of water. When he had got it he went on rapidly— "Next day we put the distance to Newcastle between us and Thornley, and on the second Bill and I engaged to work our passage out to America on board a merchant vessel lying in the Tyne. Bob and Jim were not so successful, and so on the third day they enlisted under false names. On the same day as we sailed out of the Tyne they were sent southward to York, We never met them again. Bill's fortune and mine have varied very mach. We have been all things by turns, but success fled our grasp. No doubt our ill luck is but the reward of that terrible and still unavenged deed. That is all, stranger. I pray you to remember it well, to write it down so that the families of those poor creatures may know what became of them. We did not know their names, and the night was too dark to discern their features plainly.' "But why did Black Bill fire upon you ?" I hastily enquired, since I saw his strength was , nearly spent. "Because he noticed me speaking ,to some Irishmen yesterday, and be said I talked in my sleep. He was afraid I was going to put the I Irish on our track. I only wish I had; perhaps if I had paid the penalty of the crime I would have died a happier man. But now I have no hope, no rest. Farewell, friend; if ever you reach the old country go to Thornley and tell them how and where I died and what I have told you." "But what name—what name must I ask for ?" I anxiously enquired. "Ask for my father, old Harry Sp—," but ere his could finish the name the flickering flame of life went out. His eyes closed, and the hand clasped in mine lay limp and pulse-, less. I dug a trench and buried him as decently as I was able and as means would allow. He had few possessions and little money. I searched carefully every nook of the cabin, but no clue could discover to his or Black Bill's identity. The names they were then known by were doubtless assumed ones. Some years after, when crossing the prairies between the Rockies and the Eastern States, one of my fellow travellers told a story of how a certain Englishman known as Black Bill had been caught in the act of ill-using one of the Indian women, and in return had been tortured with such refined and protracted cruelty as only the Apaches can inflict, to escape which the unhappy victim had dashed out his brains against an upright post. From the description of him I felt little doubt but. that he was the murderer of the gold-digger in that solitary canyon and the leader of the four who threw the Irish blacklegs into Thornley firey heap in the '44.