+ ~ -
 
Please report pronunciation problems here. Select and sample other voices. Options Pause Play
 
Report an Error
Go!
 
Go!
 
TOC
 

broken English, and was short and dark; the
other was taller and fairer, of about the same
height and general appearance as the prisoner,
but stouter and having more beard." Elizabeth
Hall, his wife, was present. She looked
attentively at the taller man while the short one was
conversing with her husband. He stood in the
middle of the road, with his face towards her.
"I am sure," said she, "that the prisoner is
not he. His height and dress are about the
same, but the features are different. The man
I saw, had more beard and was stouter."
William Bolt says: " I was present and saw the
two men before Hall's house, and afterwards
when I was walking down the road with Hall.
We were all three taken to Newgate to point
out the man we had seen at Wegby, but neither
was amongst the men led before us. The
prisoner is certainly not one of them. Afterwards,
when shown the prisoner alone in the cell at
Reigate, I recognised him as one of the men led
before me at Newgate, but I still failed to
discern in him the features of either of the men I
had seen at Wegby."

Hall's house is about a mile from where Lock
saw the two men about an hour previously; and
there can be little doubt that the two men
seen by Lock and those seen by Mr. and Mrs.
Hall and William Bolt, were the same.

A gentleman, driving out on the Monday
afternoon, about three o'clock, saw two men
whom he knew at once by their appearance
to be Germans. They were walking along the
high road from Cuckfield and towards Reigate
and Wegby, at about five miles from the
former and nine from the latter place. Two
ladies with him confirm this, adding that one
remarked to the other how strange it was to see
Germans there.

A police-constable at Sutton deposed to
having spoken to one of two men who conversed
with each other in a foreign tongue, at two
o'clock on the night of the murder. He saw by
their agitation that something was wrong. The
one farther from Peck, was much like the
prisoner in appearance, but it was dark and he
could not see the features. They said they had
walked from Cuckfield, and were very tired.

Could there have been, by another strange
coincidence, two separate pairs of foreigners
in the same neighbourhood? One of the pair
seen by Lock made the suspicious inquiries
of Hall, travelled southward, and may have
been the pair seen as they returned from
Cuckfield by the gentleman and his party on the
Monday afternoonthe same pair that bought
the string and were seen in the thicket, where
was cut the beechen cudgel found in the
chamberthe pair that committed the murder
and were seen afterwards by the police officer at
Sutton. Another pair may have stayed at the
Reigate inn on Sunday and Monday. If Kranz
were one of the latter, as one witness positively
deposes, it was surely the strangest of all
coincidences that his own purloined papers should
have been so near him and that he, being
innocent, should be so near the scene of a foul
murder just as they were about to yield against
him evidence from which he had one of the
narrowest of known escapes from the gallows.

But there was the string of peculiar make,
partly bound round the body of the murdered
woman, partly round the bundle belonging
to the man accused of her murder: the string
bought at Reigate by two Germans, one of them
closely resembling him, if not himself, only a
few hours before the murder. Here again there
were coincidences of a most unexpected kind
tending to weaken the force of the suspicion.

The prisoner accounted for the possession of
the string, by saying that he picked it up on the
pavement before a tobacco shop in Commerce-
street, Whitechapel. Again, what could sound
more like a trumped-up tale? But the spot he
named, is not only within two minutes' walk of
his own lodging, but is also close to the shop of
the very string-maker who had made for Mr.
Blount at Reigate that peculiar sort of cord! The
prisoner's attorney, in surveying the spot,
himself actually picked up, on the door-sill of a printing-
office next door to the tobacconist's shop, a
piece of string; and he saw, lying on the types,
a ball of cord of the same stoutness as the cord
in question. It is another striking and
remarkable incident in this case that a
circumstance affording such strong suspicion, should
have been turned aside through the mere
accident of the prisoner's having lodged so near to
the very string-maker's shop. Though, if he were
innocent, his having done so led immediately to
his possessionby a coincidence almost miraculously
adverseof a piece of evidence connecting
him with a murder that he did not commit, as
strongly as he became connected with it by those
papers of his that were at about the same time
being left upon the scene of the murder's
perpetration!

THE MINE SPIRIT.

THE lists were set, the tents were pitched,
The rosy country people clustered,
The flags flew forth, the herald's train
Around the great pavilion mustered;
When, from what region no one knew,
Rode in a stately stranger knight,
And, without word of courtesy,
Addressed him to the coming fight.

Like a fair image all of gold
He rode, careering round the lists,
As the rude warders checked the crowd
With truncheon strokes and blows of fists.
When the fierce trumpet had blown thrice
All people's eyes were eager turned
To where the radiance of the sun
A glory on his helmet burned.

His saddle-housing was half gold,
Gold spangled shone his ostrich feather,
Like a winged creature of the stars,
He shone, that radiant July weather.
Upon his breast a golden sun,
Upon his helm two silver stars,
With vizor down the stranger rode,
The very prototype of Mars.

Without a bow to lord or dame,
Without one homage to the king,