DREADFUL CELLAR SECRET

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2646, 15 May 1923, Page 8

DREADFUL CELLAR SECRET

FATE OP FRENCH CHILD. TRAGEDY SOLVED AFTER THIRTY YEARS. Writing to the Sydney Sun, ''Lewis Gunner" tells a tragic story of his find in the cellar of a large house in Villers Brettoneux in 1918 when the town was crumpling' up under the fury of ihe German guns. The cellars of the town were cheerless places (he writes) ,and whenever there came a lull in the bombardment I climbed the stones stages that led to the house overhead, and explored the damaged contents until Fritz hurried me btck to the comparative safety of the cellar. On one occasion I carried back a pile of books to my abode. One of the volumes was a family photograph album, arid turning over its pages I examined the portraits of the past and present members of the Depau family, whose shattered home I occupied. I was presently attracted by the portrait of a bonny child, whose smiling face seemed to brighten my uninteresting quarters. Beneath the photograph was written: "Charles, infant, son of Augustin and Pauline Depau. who mysteriously disappeared from his home in Tillers Brettoneux on October 4, 1887, two days after this portrait was taken. He was never again seen by his sorrowing parents."

That night Fritz heavily strafed the town, and presently a shot struck the house. An avalanche of bricks and mortar thundered down upon the cellar, and a portion of its arched roof fell in, leaving a gaping hole where the roof curved away from one of the walls. I have heard stories told by Diggers of the discovery of old wines sealed vrp for safe keeping in the hollow walls and roofs of collars, so a few hours later I piled a couple of empty wine barrels against the wall, and with a lighted candle climbed up to the hole just near it. I thrust the candle through the hole to try the air, and finding that it burned brightly,'inserted my head into a large cav-ern-like space between the cellar roof and the floor of the house. After testing the strength of the cellar roof, 1 climbed up through the hole in the forlorn hope of discovering liquid treasure.

As I crawled along on my hands and knees J stumbled upon something which was to .solve the thirty-year-oid mystery. Tn one corner of the musty] cavern the light fell upon (lie skeleton of a child. Resting between two of the white ribs was a rusty top trumpetAs I looked at my gruesome find I remembered the face of the child that had recently smiled at me when I turned over the pages of the photograph album. The only conclusion T could come to was that the cellar bad been built after the house had been erected, and that the long-lost child bad, in the absence of a workman, climbed up a ladder and crawled through the almost finished roof. Tn the space above it had been overcome by foul air, or had fallen asleep. Subsequently the workman had returned to seal up the child in a tomb by completing the building of the roof.