A PLOT FOR A NOVELIST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1261, 30 April 1896, Page 16

A PLOT FOR A NOVELIST.

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST THE DEATH SENTENCE. As fine an example as tho annals of tho law afford of the fallibility of what is regarded as tho best and most conclusive proof is the celebrated Danish case of Soren Qvist. This man was tho pastor of a little village in Jutland, where he lived, a widower, with a daughter, who kept house for him. A wealthy farmer, named Marten Burns, who lived in a neighbouring village, had sued for the hand of the pastor’s daughter, and had been repulsed in such a way as to till him with hatred for both the girl and her father. Soren Qvist was, later on, induced to hire a poor brother of tlm rejected suitor, one Neil Burns, as a farm hand.

Tho man proved to be lazy, impudent and quarrelsome, and the pastor, who was noted as a man of quick and violent temper, though otherwise of an excellent character, had many angry altercations with him. In Olio of these, losing liis self - control, lie seized a spade in tho garden where they stood, and dealt Neil Burns several blows with it. _ The farm hand dropped like a hog to the ground ; but when the pastor, alarmed and instantly sorry for what ho had done, raised him lip, tho fellow’ (so the pastor said) broke away, leaped over the garden hedge, and made oil into tho adjacent wo*ds.

After that lie was mysteriously missing. Strange rumours began to circulate, and bye-aud-byo Marten Bums, the rich brother and rejected suitor, came upon the scene. Ho went before a magistrate and charged the pastor with the murder of his missing brother. Ho produced two witnesses, who swore that they heard Soren Qvist in angry altercation with Neil Burns, heard him say that ho would beat him to death, saw tho spade swing twice in the air abovo the hedge top, and that after that all was quiet. They were near neighbours of tho pastor. Another witness testified that on the evening of tho day on which Neil Burns disappeared, ho was coming homo very late and passed the pastor’s garden; that ho heard a sound as of digging in the earth, and, looking over the hedge, saw tho pastor, in his familiar green dressing gown, and with a white night-cap on, busily levelling the earth with a spade. Tho pastor turned round, and, afraid of discovery, tho witness immediately ran away. At Marten Burns’ instigation the pastor was now arrested, and his garden was searched for the body of the missing man. At the very spot pointed out by tho wit-

I noss who had seen tho pastor digging at midnight, a body was found. It was dressed in tho clothes worn by Neil Burns j when he was last seen alive; a leaden ring was in the left ear, the same that Neil had worn for many years ; the face of tho dead man was disfigured by blows such as might have been dealt with a spade, and the features could not, even by those who knew the deceased best, lie recognised. Everyone except the pastor accepted the body as that of tho murdered Neil Burns. The pastor vehemently protested liis innocence, but behaved as one dazed by the discovery of tho body and the other apparently direct evidences of his guilt. A dairy maid in liis own employ now came forward and testified that she, looking from nor bedroom window, saw him, in bis green gown and white night-cap, going out into the garden late on the same night Unit the passing peasant had sworn to seeing him out there in tho act of digging. So the unfortunate clergyman was tried, and on what seemed to be direct evidence of the best kind, he was convicted and sentenced to death.

At tho trial two more corroborative witnesses appeared who swore that on the same night when the digging in the garden occurred they were passed by a man dressed in a green gown and a white night-cap going towards the garden and carrying a sack on his hack which seemed to contain something heavy. This cumulative testimony not only convinced the Court and all who hoard it, but convinced even the accused pastor himself. He confessed the crime, saying that he had on several occasions walked in his sleep and done things of which ho was not conscious ; and ho was now satisfied that, in his sleep, lie had arisen and gone out into the woods, and there found the corpse of Noil Burns, who had died of the. wounds received at his hands, and had buried it at midnight as described by tho witnesses. The poor priest sulTered death by decapitation.

Twenty-ono years afterwards tl o man Neil Burns re-appeared in the vilbgo, and told the true story. All tho apparently conclusive proof was manufactured by the revengeful Marten Burns. Tho quarrel of Neil with his pastor, his flight after being felled with tho spade, his immediate disappearance and the burial of tho counterfeit corpse in ' tho pastor’s garden wero all deliberately planned. The man seen digging the grave in the garden was Marton Burns, who had entered the parsonage and stolen tho parson’s green gown and white night-cap for the purpose. The corpse was that of a suicide, dragged from its grave at the cross-roads, dressed in Neil’s clothes, and its face battered by Marton with a spade. Then Neil was sent out of tho country with a sum of money, and ordered never to return, which ho never did until ho heard of liis rich brother’s death, by which event lie hoped to profit.