AN IMPENITENT THIEF.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2643, 21 January 1908, Page 2

AN IMPENITENT THIEF.

In his "Romances of Real Life' Leigh Hunt recalls an unconscionable swindle of which a London baker was the victim.

A lodger, whom he had taken in, informed the baker that he came from Banbury. "Banbury ! Why thcr you must know of the great Mr. Wickham ?

"I am Mr. Wickham," replied the lodger. "I came up to London incognito in order to arrest a merchant who owes me a large sum of money, and who is about to abscond." The baker, who had come in his boyhood from Banbury, was overwhelmed by the honour of having such a lodger, and yet more overwhelmed by the condescension of the great Mr. Wickham's borrowing two hundred guineas from him until his luggage, which had gone astray, came to hand.

Shortly after, the great Mr. Wickham was struck down with sudden and mortal illness, and the anxious baker called in doctors and nurses to attend upon him. When death was imminent the great Mr. Wickham had a clergyman brought, from whom ho received the Holy Communion with the most unctuous devotion, and when he had thus settled his spiritual account, he proceeded to ease his mind of his last cares by" making a will, in which he left the bulk of his vast fortune to the faithful baker. After his death' the baker ordered the most sumptuous funeral, inviting to it, amongst others, the great Mr, Wickham's lawyer. That gentleman lost not a moment in calling upon the baker to ask him what the invjfation meant. "Why," said the lawyer. "I have a letter by this morning's post from Mr. Wickham. You must have been swindled."

When the baker had assured himself that he had been swindled, he tumbled the body out of the costly coffin on to the floor in a fury, and had him buried like a dog in an obscure corner of St. Clement's Churchyard.