An Old Story Re-Told.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XVIII, Issue 1689, 15 April 1885, Page 3

An Old Story Re-Told.

*- Jr K ''Aebi: Kfi u coiresponlent k-I Uos U.e following story Nineteen years ago a man iistne.! John Me Km z:c. ?■ t lire to the Waugieku Lb .-A;;;..-, j .. —j u ~,;] . £ from aoeanui. McKenzie wa- t..e owner >T the hotel, ana .-ct nre to T I-r toe pur, r-e I getting the in-u.an in- oev— p—ivi. A man pr.r.wM F.rn. who slept m the upper room, did c>'t awake in time to escape and so was (tuned to a.-ath, McKenzie was apprehended, tiled f.r muider, convicted mid sentenced to death. I was present in Court when Jo to- Johnston passed the <le.th sentence. McKenzie, a powerful, stalwai t man in the verv prim* of life. pieser.teJ an appear ance of the meet abject terror, and as he stood in tbe dock, while the Judge uttered the awful words of dean. ‘ that yon be hang ed by the neck until you are dead ' —the brown Lair cf tne prisoner actually turned partially grey before the eves of the onlookers. It afterwards appeared that Mr McKenzie had no actual intention of killing the man, Finn, through the burning of the hotel, so his sentence was commuted to imprisonment hj i life. After 19 years’contin. ruent in gaol, McKenziejis now a gaunt, emaciated, white-haired, and.brokenspirited man. During all these years, McKenzie has never been outside the walls of the gad. He acts as coik, and ssmetimes nurses prisoners who art ill. Despite the one crime of Lis life, McKenzie had many good points about bim, andin thc-old days possessed not a few friends. Some of those friends lately petitioned the Governor to commute the prisoner's sentence and set him fu-e ; but the prayer of the petition Las been refused, His Excellency declining to interfere. McKenzie, therefore, seems likely to live and die and be buried in the Wellington gaol. 1 do not think McKenzie knew that the man Finn was in tne upstairs room at the time he set fire to the hotel, and this consideration, in some measure, lessens Lis guilt iu a moral sense.