FANTASTIC REVENGE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3228, 3 November 1881, Page 4

FANTASTIC REVENGE.

The Tageblatt of Berlin gives a curious account of an oak tree, which is the chief object of attraction to visitors in the village of Noebdenitz, in Saxony. It is said to be 500 years old, and its aged and infirm branches are propped up all around by beams. But the antiquity of this tree would be nothing veiy remarkable in itself were it not that the trunk has been used for many years past as a burial vault. Its lower part, which measures 14 ells in circumferance, is hollow, and the aperture to this great cave is closed by a lattice work, made of iron bars. Through this sort of window the unsuspecting stranger who is first led up to take a peep perceives with amazement the skeleton of a man seated in the middle of the hollow. It is the skeleton of the Lord of Wintersheim, who died about a century ago, and whose choice of this singular mode of sepulture is very minutely described by the " inevitable " guide who shows the place. He had married the heiress of Wintersheim, and being himself a man of no landed property, was often reproached by his amicable spouse with this discreditable poverty. Throughout his life he endure d as best he might the quips and sneers of her who was, in more senses than one, his better half. But he resolved, at any rate, to have a tardy revenge one day, where the sharp tongue of the Lady, of Wintersheim could no longer wound him. He purchased from the parochial authorities of Noebdenitz the already venerable oak, and gave directions that his bones should he placed in its hollow trunk. Here, therefore, he has reposed ever since, sitting in state upon lands and within walls that he •ould once call his own—a lasting protest against the charge of having owned no land. It is to be hoped that the lady whose hard words drove her lord and master to so ingenious a device, survived him to see the effect which her taunts had produced.