A STORY OF THWARTED CRIME.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 114, 9 November 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

A STORY OF THWARTED CRIME.

One of the most remarkable stories of thwarted crime that we remember to have met with (says the Pall Mall Gazette) comes from India. A lady with her two children, who were both young, was going in her own ekka from Ramnagar to a place in the centre of the Bar tract. The driver was an old friend of the family and was thought to be trustworthy. For this reason the lady did not think it nocessary to leave her jewellery behind her. At a lonely part of the road the trustworthy servant stopped and ordered his mistress to pass her gewgaws along. She did so — not unnaturally — and then the man proceeded to bind her, preparatory to killing her. At her request he agreed to kill the infants after he had despatched their mother. He lifted his axe to strike the blow, but the head flew off and disappeared in the brushwood some yards away. By this time the lady was unconscious. When Bhe camo to she fouud her husband leaning over her and undoing her fastenings. He explained that he had felt a dread as of some impending calamity, and so had followed her. In tho thicket the trustworthy servant was found dead, his body alroady blue, putrid, and bloated. He had been stung by a Khaki snake, whose bite paralyses the victim on the instant, and decomposes him in an hour.