SAVED FROM THE GALLOWS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8334, 10 April 1889, Page 3

SAVED FROM THE GALLOWS.

A correspondent of the Field narrates a story tolil in the smoking-room of Sunach Lodge, Perthshire, after a day's pike fishing in Glensunach Loch. " I have known of a fisherman being visited by a ghost," said Rose, one of the party, " and as I am an old man I should like the story to be preserved. I was living some 14 miles from Worcester about forty years ago, and was a keen fisherman. One day late in the season I had a good afternoon of trout fishing in the brook which run three miles from my house, and on my way home in a very dark evening was drenched to the skin by a thunderstorm, in spite of my efforts to escapo by sheltering here and there by sheds, hedges, and the like. Six months afterwards I was disturbed in bed by a loud voice in my room saying, ' Get ii]) and go to Worcester.' t started, rubbed my eyes, sat up and listened, but heard nothing, and there was not a breath (if air stirring out of doors. I went off to sleep again, and was again speedily disturbed by the same cry. I now awoke my wife and asked her if she had heard anything. ' Certainly not,' she replied, but she did not wonderthat I heard voices •after the indigestible dinner I had made. This was small comfort, and again the words sounded, this time more loud than ever at my ear, ' Get up, and go to Worcester.' I rose and struck a light ; it was half-past four a.m., and pitch dark, with' much rain I could see. The idea of descending, saddliug my horse (for my groom lived at a distant cottage), and starting to Worcester in such a deluge and with such darkness wrs not at all cheerful. But the same words sousided i more imperatively at my ear, and, telling i my wife that I was going to Worcester for the day, I slipped on my clothes, let myself out, and bpgan saddling the grey. With some sin prise I noted that, whereas she always resented this procc-s by leaping aiid kicking, on this particular morning she was perfectly quiet and tractable. I rode along the dark and miry chain of roads which surrounded Millington with ease, partly from knowing them pertectly, partly because no one ! was stirring, and towards dawn approached the Severn, now in its fujl ilood, where it was necessary to cross, if [ did not care to go on by the windinss of the liver (a much longer road), to the city. Here I expected to spend half an hour bawling from the bank till the drowsy ferryman wonld be pleased to awake, and come over to take us across. Curiously enough as I rode down the bank I espied him waiting. 'All right, ["sir; 1 heard you shouting and came over as quick as I could.' Of course I had not shouted ; but the rain and cold forbade my raising any question farther on the matter and I thankfully jumped in, and was ferried across. I had I about six miles to ride on the other side of the river, and it was half-past seven when I rode iuto Woicester, tired and hungry. However, I put up my beast, breakfasted, and, not knowing what to do, strolled out into the city. A ghostly summons had brouaht me there, but I had no further guidance, so one way seemed much the same as the other. Noticing a crowd pressing towards the assize courts, I fell in with them, and, by dint of tipping and squeezing, soon found myself listening to the end of a murder trial. The prisoner, one Llewellyn Morris, had just been found guilty, and as I entered the Judge called upon him to say anything he desired against sentence being pronounced upon him. The accusee seemed familiar to me, and yet I could not recall where I had met him. He was a little man, and appeared, while a crowded court hnng upon his fate with breathless anxiety, to be the least concerned in the assemblage. He answered the Judge respectfully, but carelessly enough, that he was entirely innocent of the murder, and that he was two or three miles away from the place where it was committed. He had a defence, a ' bally boy ' he had heard it was called, buthe could not produce his witness. He had no idea who his witness was, but on the night of the murder lie had been fishing, and had walked a couple of miles on the road home, till thunder roared and rain descended like a waterspout, with a gentleman whom he had met by the river-side. At length the storm was so fearful and the darkness < so ..deep thab they had both diverged from the road and entered a neighboring churchyard and taken refuge in the porch until, half-an-hour afterwards, the tempest passed on. He had conversed that time with his neighbor, but had no notion who he was, or he would clear him, as that storm took' place immediately alter the old man had been murdered, and it would have been physically impossible • for him to have stood in the porch unless he had been far away from the scene of the murder at that time. As it was, however, having ■o clue to his < witness, he was content to leave himself in his Lordship's hands. At once I remembered that this was the very man who had stood with me in the church- porch, and, ririnj* amid much excitement, offered myself to the Judge as a witness for the accused. After being sworn, 1 wrote down at the Judge's request, what we had talked al 0 it, and what answers the prisoner had made. Upon this the prisoner was examined, and the answers so tallied with what I had written down thai the Judge_delrvered another address to ■ the jury, apd deleting their previous WMh the W unanimously, and with-

out a moment s hesitation, acquitted him. \Ve had talked, as it happened, of .1 curious legend in a neighboring lord's family, and the prisoner had tjiven me some information ahoufc the spawning of a trout, which, us a fisherman, I had naturally remembered. Years afterwards a convict at Dartmoor prison" on his deathbed confessed that he alone was guilty of the murder for which my companion in the porch so narrowly escaped couviction ; and so, you see, a ghost was of advantage for once, and let us hope, for the credit of fishermen, chose one of them to perfurm an act of justice in consequence of his gentle, amiable, and kindly disposition."