More about Parnell.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, 24 February 1891, Page 2

More about Parnell.

» The Argus correspondent writes from London : -•• The subject of Mr Parnell is decidedly " off" tor the present. Hut the following story, with which Mr Matthews has been amusing his friends, may be worth recording. Tn his early days at the Home Office he found that his department was chronically much concerned about Hit- doings and the safety of a mysterious gentleman residing in the lie-gent's Park, who never went out during the daylight, but lor whom a hor*>e was brought from some unknown stable every [ night at about 10 o'clock. No-soon-ner had the horse arrived than the gentleman, who had evidently been waiting for it behind the hall door, would dart out, mount it, and gallop away towards Kilburn or Highgate as if the Kvil One were at his heels. No one ever found out how or when he re-entered the house : but certain it was that he did so, for each succeeding night found him awaiting his steed. The theory formed by Scot-land-yard and the Home Office was that the gentleman knew himself to bo marked for assassination, being probably a renegade Nihilist, or possibly a foreign voluptuary who had incurred the wrath of an insensate father. As four or live Russian Nihilists, or " Scopski," have been made away with in London during the last lew years, the Home Office was urgent in its instructions to the police to take care of the mysterious gentleman, and shadow any loiterers who might be hanging about when the horse was due. The beats were all doubled, and not the Queen herself was more an object of solicitude than the unknown one. In time it came to pass that one of the constables thus employed was promoted for his vigilance and intelligence to the division of police which guards the House of Commons itself ; and as he stood by the side of his new chief, Superintendent Horsier, what was his astonishment to see the re- 1 cluse of Regents-park respectfully saluted by the various members of the force ; and on his involuntarily exclaiming, " Lud, if it aint old Tarn O'Shanter hisself," he was

pressed foi an explan'atib'n 1 ,, w'bicS; boing in due course related to Matthews, led that astute man of the world to perceive that the recluse was haunted by a fear of nothing more formidable than the detectives «f of Captain O'Shea ; and the precau- " tions previously enforced were thence forth rel&xett. Ifc should lie explained that at York-terrace, Regerit's-park, where the incidents happened, the hall door of each house is at the back, and is connected with the dwellirig* itself toy , a \6tif'p&Bß&s& The front of, each house joins on to a garden skirted by a road in the park itself, and Mr Parnell probably found his way back ''over the garden wall." ,; -