A SMUGGLER’S SECRET.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19958, 27 November 1926, Page 25

A SMUGGLER’S SECRET.

HIDDEN BY CHIMNEY. REVELATION MADE IN RESTORING HOUSE. The restoration of a famous seventeenth century -mansion, at Wivennoe, near Colchester, has led to some interesting linds. In an ancient sealed cupboard were some of the earliest matches, four inches long, half an inch wide, and tipped at b.fh ends with sulphur. Close by is a huge fireplace, seven feet six inches wide. The proximity of the matches to the fireplace might have added another to the long list of fire mysteries at country houses, and in that case, say the Children’s Newspaper, there would have been lost a secret for up the groat chimney there is a secret compartment. Some previous owner of the old place was a smuggler, and here was the hiding place for his unlawful goods! Much is heard nowadays about smuggling in America, and it is remembered that many of the men who fought under Nelson and other British heroes were smugglers. Few people in those days thought sinuggli- disreputable. The late Lord Malmesbury, himself a Minister of State, wrote with much zest of his own experiences at Heron Court, near Christchurch. Ho was once the prisoner of smugglers. While bird’s-nesting in his father’s park ho saw smugglers burying kegs of brandy in a copse. They seized him, and threatened to kill him on the spot unless ho remained quiet for an hour. He remained as mute as a mouse while they finished their work. Then they made him drink some of the liquor which the.' drew from a tapped keg and swear solemnly that he would not toll of tho incident. He went back to the house when released, and was scolded by his father for his Jong absence, but he kept his pledge. He dared not tell of tho sm""glers and the hoard they had buried in the park. Robert Louis Stevenson lived for a time ! at Christchurch, and must have heard the stories of tre neighbourhood, for the smugglers and treasure-hunters of some of his tales have quite tho Christchurch flavour. There was a true Stevenson character in a certain Dr Quartley, who practised for 50 years at Christchurch in those old days. One stormy night ho was knocked up from bed by two muffled mounted men. They commanded him to take horse and ride with them to where there was work to do. On tho way they were joined by two other men, and all rode in silence to a lonely cottage in the New Forest. There ho found a young man desperately wounded. Tho doctor extracted a bullet from his back, and ordered the patient to bo kept quiet. “Weil, Tom,” said one of the men to tho sufferer, ‘wilt thee stay hero and be hanged, or shall wo tip thee into the cart?” Poor Tom chose the cart, and away they went into the depths of tho forest. The winter pas.secl, and then before dawn one morning there was a great knocking at the doctor’s door. The smugglers had come back to bring him a contraband gift to reward him for saving Tim’s life. Fifteen years j n a trip to the Avon, the doctor was tho recipient of much oolite attention from the boatman. It was Tom, long cured of his wound, and, it may bo hoped, of smuggling.