A Spanish Tragedy.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 48, 12 October 1870, Page 7

A Spanish Tragedy.

A shocking story is told by the Spanish correspondent of the Standard. On the outskirts of Castile de las Ghiardias, a village some eight leagues from Seville, stands a small unpretending farmhouse, tenanted by a hitherto thriving and industrious laboring man and his wife. They had not been married very long, and a baby had just arrived to complete their domestic happiness. Among the acquaintances of this young couple were a gipsy and his wife, with whom they were on very friendly terms, tho gipsy-man being employed as an agent in the disposal of the farm produce and in the purchase and sale of animals, &c. On the birth of the child, therefore, the gipsy couple wished to be its sponsors, and the request was readily complied with. The baptismal day having arrived, the whole household, with the exception of tha mother and the gipsy woman, who remained in attendance, proceeded to the church, a d'stance of two miles. After everybody had left, and sufficient time bad been given for the party to get well out of hearing, the gipsy woman, armed with a pistol, approached the bedside of the invalid, and dem uided of her all the money that was in the house. The poor woman at once indicated the room in which their little fortune was kept. Directly the gipsy had entered this room, she got up out ot bed, ran to the door, locked the thief inside, and, seizing her husband’s blunderbuss, rushed outside to the window by which the gipsy might escape, and presenting the gun, threatened her with instant death if she moved, at the same time raising loud cries for help, which, unhappily, no one appears to have heard, in the meanwhile, the christening party were on their return. Meeting two of the guxrdia civile, mutual compliments passed, and the soldiers wore asked to come to the farmhouse and partake of the modest fiesta prepared for the occasion. This proposal and its ready acceptance must have somewhat disconcerted the gipsy man, for he now proposed to run on before to see that everything was ready, aud begged to be allowed to carry the child. Un reaching the house, he immediately perceived that his design had in some way miscarried. Approacuing the woman at the window, he desired her to let his wife go free, or otherwise he would kill her child. Disbelieving the threat, she declined ; whan, without another word, the man whipped out his knife, and with one blow nearly severed the little innocent's head from its body, and tossed the quivering corpse to its mother. Maddened by this horrible act, the woman turned her gun upon the man, and laid him dead at her feet. The explosion and screams brought the two soldiers almost instantaneously to the house, one of whom rushed in and unlocked the door of tho room in which the gipsy woman was confined, and was at once shot through tho heart by her. The second .soldier, hearing this latter explosion, hurriedly entered the house, and seeing his comrade dead on the floor, and the gipsy with the still smoking pistol in her hand, raised his carbine and killed her where she stood.