LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 33, 8 July 1874, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THE LATE CAPTAIN BARCLAY-ALLAR-DICE, AND ONE THOUSAND MILKS IN ONE THOUSAND HOURS.

f Concluded.'] 36th Day, Wednesday, July s—Midnight, starlight, clear and fine ; 4 a.m., cool and pleasant; 7 a.m., warm and showery ; 10 a.m;, fine, but cloudy ; 1 p.m., wet ; 3 p.m., sunshiny 5 8 p.m., cool and cloudy ; 11 p.m., moon and starlight. At sunrise most people would have thought it impossible for him to proceed, as he was so debilitated and in such agony, but his determination again overcame everything. As usual, he got better in daytime. 36th day, Thursday, July 6th—Midnight, moon and starlight ; 2 a.m , cool aud cloudy; 4 a.m., wet ; noon, cool, with a fine breeze ; 4 p.m., hot ; 7 p.m., cool aud pMa nnt. In the early morning he was so ill that it required the greatest care on the part of h ! s attendants to manage the thr. , r-x he had become so slow that little was left for rest. At one p.m. was much exhausted from want of rest, but persevered-‘.otj trary to all expectation ; his appetite luckily keeping good, 37th day, Friday, July 7th—Midnight, cool and pleasant . 8 a.m., calm and wet ; 2 p.m., cool and dry ; J p.m., hot and sunshiny 9 p.m . cool and pleasant; 10 p.m., very dark and gloomy. Better in the morning and day time, but at night time felt excessive pain, and was worried an impending thunderstorm. 38th day, Saturday, July Bth—Midnight, dark and lightning ; 2 a.m., cool and pleasant ; 7 a.m,, heavy thunderstorm ; 10 a.m., warm and and cloudy ; 6 p.m., cool and and cloudy. Much troubled by the heavy weather, and his appetite began to fail him for the first time. 39th day, Sunday, July 9th —Midnight, cold and wet; 6 a.m., high wind and dry ; 3 p.m., wet. In “aches and pains’’all over, as usual, but struggled bravely on. Being the last Sunday, the crowd was very great, but he would not consent to the course being roped and staked, for fear of making too much parade. 40th day, Monday, July 10th—Midnight, windy, dark and wet; noon, fair, but cloudy; 2 p.m., windy, cold, and dry. Rain and wind excessively troublesome. At sunset could scarcely move, and much weaker. 41st day, Tuesday, July 11—Midnight, cold and windy ; 11 a.m, sunshine ; 8 p.m, cool and pleasant. Less time than ever for rest, as his legs required incessant rubbing, and nearly all up with him. In better spirits, however, as the end was fast approaching. The ground had to be roped and staked this morning, owing to the crowd incommoding him so. 42nd and last day, Wednesday, July 12th, 1809 —Midnight, cool and pleasant; 6 a.m, sunshiny ; 9a.m, hot. Could walk no faster but in far better spirits, owing to being last day. A hundred to one on him was offered freely without a single taker. At noon an enormous crowd assembled. He started for his last mile at 3,16 p.m, after a rest of 23 min, and completed his Herculean task at 3.37 p.m, amidst vociferous cheers. His quickest mile was the thirty-fifth, walked in llmin between 10 and 11 a.m on the second day, Friday, June 2nd, whilst his slowest was his 629th in 36 min 30 sec, between 4 and 5 a.m, on the twenty-seventh day, Tuesday, June 27th. His average time per mile on the last day was 7min 25sec slower than on the first; the average time per mile throughout was 17min 45Jsec and the average rate of walking throughout was three miles three furlongs 51 yauls per hour. The actual time occupied in walking the 1000 miles was 12 days 8 hours 1 min 30sec, which gives an average rate of 81 miles 134 yards 2ft per diem. On finishing he was immersed in a hot bath for a few minutes, well rubbed down with flannels, and put to bed and put to bed at 4 p.m. He slept soundly till midnight, then took some water gruel, and slept till 9 a.m the next morning, when be got up as well as ever, and attended the July meeting on the racecourse for four hours. On the 14th July he posted to London, and attended to his usual pursuits in perfect health till 17th July, when he left for Ramsgate, and joined the Walcharen expedition. SPIRITED AWAY. [From “ All the Year Round.”) Every now and then we see in the newspapers “ mysterious disappearance.” Sometimes it is a young lady, sometimes a boy of roving mind, sometimes a business man. Now and then we fear there is a real tragedy connected with it, though very very seldom of the “ Bayswater mystery” type. Oftener the disappearance means heart-breaking, it may be, to the one who is gone as well as to those who are left behind, v Perhaps the affair gets into the agony column of the “Times,” amid the correspondence of burglars, who are popularly supposed to communicate confidentially under tragic as well as comic masks ; “ dearest X, return to your inconsolable family, all shall be forgiven,” being as much to their purpose as “ give the baboon a biscuit.” Oftenest, however, the mystery ignobly collapses. The lad comes home when his pocket-money is spent and he gets hungry ; the business man, whose wife was alternately terrified by newspaper hints that he might have been “ lured down a cellar,” or “ hurried under one of the arches of the Adelphi,” or “ kept in some dreadful den until a ranson is extorted,” and maddened by “kind friends,” who suggested that he had gone out on a spree and taken some one of the other sex with him, nay, that perhaps by ibis time he had another wife in America—the wife, who has been equally anxious either way, finds her husband able, when he turns up, to give a satisfactory account of himself ; or, if he can’t, she is wise enough to say nothing about it, and, above all, not to take the “ kind friends” aforesaid into her confidence. It is the public, that part of it which is getting to live more and more on sensations, that grumbles. People think they are illused because there has been after all no scandal, no spiriting away, no mystery of an} kind. They couldn’t have grumbled in that way about tho “absence,” as the old pamphlet calls it, of William Harrison, gent., steward to the Lady Viscountess Campden, who, who in 1660 suddenly disappeared, and did not turn up again for more than two years, during which time three people had been hanged for murdering him, and he himself had been a slave in Turkey. There are horrors enough to please anybody, and the case is rendered doubly remarkable by the evidence, or rather no evidence, on which the supposed murderers were convicted. You

will find it in Vol 111. of the “ lliirleian Miscellanies,” reprinted from a pamphlet of the lime, which describes it as “ one of the most remarkable occurrences which hath happened in the memory of man.” It was on August 16th, 1660, that Mr Harrison, an old man of seventy, -went from Campden, in Gloucestershire, to Charringworth, two miles off, to receive my lady’s rents. As he had not come back between eight and nine at night, his wife sent their man John Perry to meet his master. Nothing more was seen of Perry that night, and next morning young Harrison went out to look for his father, and meeting Perry took him round to various farms, where they were told the old man had called the day before, but had not staid. At last they heard that an old woman “ leasing ” (“pikeing” is the Midland word, “gleaning” it is called in the home counties) in a field near Campden had picked up a hat, band, and coat near a big furze-brake on the highway. So to her they went, and found the hat and coat hacked and cut, and the band bloody. They searched the furze-brake, but could find nothing; indeed all Campden turned out i search, but the supposed dead body was not forthcoming, nor do we hear of any stains on the ground or signs of a struggle. Next day Perry was brought before a justice of the peace, and said that having gone about a land’s length towards Charringworth he was afraid to go further, and told William Reed, whom he met, that he would go back and fetch his young master’s horse. He then met another man, one Pearce, and made with him a second start; but again lost heart, and, at last, went back and lay in the hen roost till Ik> heard twelve strike. He then started again ; but, a great mist rising, he lost his way and lay under a hedge till morning. He then went into Charriugworth, heard of the steward from several, one of whom had paid him twenty-three pounds, and was returning home with the news, when he met young Harrison as aforesaid. All those whom Perry had met confirmed bis statements in every particular. “ But,” asked the justice, “ if you were afraid at nine of the clock, how became you so bold at midnight?” “The moon had then risen,” replied Perry. “ Why did you adventure forth again without asking whether your master was come home ?’’ “ I knew he was not, because I saw a light in his room.”

Perry was kept in custody, sometimes in the lock-up, sometimes in an inn at Campden ; and during the week he told “ somebody ” that his master had been killed by a tinker, at least so “ somebody ” informed the justices. “ Somebody else,” had heard him say that the servant of a neighbouring squire had done it ; while a third “ somebody ” averred that Perry had declared the body was hidden in a certain bean rick, which was of course at once pulled down to no purpose. The wretched man was then brought a third time before a J.P., and urged to confess if he really knew who the murderer was. Whereupon, with strong affirmation that he would die to justify his words, he said :— '* Ever since I’ve been in my master’s service my mother and brother have lain at me to help them to money, they being so poor, bidding me tell them when my master went to receive the rents, for they would then waylay and murder him. On that very 16th of the month I was going an errand, and met my brother. ‘Now’s your time,’ said I, ‘for today he goes for the rents,’ The same evening I met him hanging about the gate, through which my master would turn in home through the gardens. It was very dark, but we heard some one inside the grounds, and my brother followed in ; but I took a turn in the fields, and going in by-and-by I found my master on the ground and my brother upon him, and mother standing by. ‘ Ah, rogues, will you kill me ?’ cried my master. ‘ Don’t kill him,’ said I; but my brother replied : “ Peace, peace, you’re a fool ;’ and so strangled him, and took a bag of money out of his pocket, and threw it into mother’s lap. They then said : I Go you to Campden Court, and see if anybody is stirring, and we will throw him into the great sink by Wallington’s mill. So I took my master’s hat, and coat, and band, and went to the Court gate, where I met Pearce, and walked with him a piece of the way, as if to look for my master. Then I went into the hen roost, and, rising as aforesaid, I hacked the hat and coat with my knife, and threw all three on the highway, that it might be thought he was there robbed and murdered, and then I went on towards Charringworth.” Hereupon Joan and Richard Perry were apprehended, and there was much fruitless searching of mill-sinks, and drawing of fish-ponds, and poking among the ruins of Campden house, burnt in the late wars. Poor Joan and her son indignantly deny the whole charge, which John affirms, saying he will jnstify it to his death ; and it makes against Richard that as he was being taken back from the justice’s house, he dropped out of his pocket a ball of inkle, which one of the guard took up. ‘ Give it me,” he said, “ it is only my wife’s hair lace.” The guard untied it, found a slip-kot at the end, and showed it to John, who was too far on in front lu notice when it was dropped; “That,” cried he, “ is the very string my master was strangled with.” Moreover, next Lord’s day, Joan and Richard were brought to church, the minister designing to speak to them and exhort them to repent and confess. Their road lay past Richard’s house, and, two of his children running out to meet him, he took one up in his arms and led the other by the hand, when on a sudden both their noses fell a bleeding, “ which was looked on as ominous.”

People then remembered that the year before Mr Harrison’s house had been broken into on the market day, while he and his family were at lecture, and seven score pounds of money taken away. Besides, not long before the steward's disappearance, John Perry had one night made a hideous outcry in the garden, and, running in, had declared that two men in white, with naked swords, had set upon him, and he had defended himself with a sheep-pick, which he showed to be hacked in several places. John, therefore, being questioned about the robbery, said hie brother was the thief, and had told him the money was buried in their garden, *• We were to have divided it this Michaelmas,” added he. Of course, after the strictest search, nothing was found in Perry’s garden. Tne men in white, he acknowledged, was an invention : “ I wanted to make my master think there were rogues about, that we might rob him without suspicion.” (To he continued.)