TREASURE TRACED BY A SHADOW.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 24 January 1914, Page 10

TREASURE TRACED BY A SHADOW.

HOW A BEGGAR BECAME RICH

"On the first of May I have a golden head."

These are the mystic lines, graven on a. solitary marble pillar erected in a lonely, stretch of land, which led a j wandering beggar, Annibale Tosci, to the'finding of a fortune of £45,000. Tosci has just died at Mantua, and in his will he tells the romantic story of his acquirement of riches. It appears that'about 60 years ago a wealthy and eccentric Frenchman, M. Anspach, aied at Naples. A few days before his death he ordered the erection on his land, which he had leased for 90 years, of a marble pillar, and he directed that this pillar should be kept in a state of preservation after his death. On it was engraved the peculiar inscription quoted above. Thousands of passersby tried to guess what the words meant, but failed. The heirs of the dead Frenchman excavated the ground under the pillar, but could find nothing. Many years sped away, and at last neople stopped guessing, and the pillar became only a curiosity and- an example of an old man's purposeless eccentricity. At length the beggar Tosci came to the city and 6aw the pillar. It chanced that he saw it on the -first of May. and he carefully noted that part of the ground which was touched by the head of the longest shadow cast by the pillar durmg the day. He marked the spot, and returned at night with a pick and a spade. By digging at the place he had marked • (which"was quite a long way from the base of the erection) he soon found buried a wallet containing a fortune of £45,000, and a letter saying 8 that the Frenchman had left it to fate is> decide upon the person who possessed sufficient acumen to inherit the1 money. The letter required orW that the finder of tbe wealth should leave it, when he in turn came to die, to some charitable cause. The beggar respected the wish. After living the life' of a man of independent means in Mantua for several years he left at lus death all the money to the poor of that town.