MURDEROUS BRIGANDS.

Patea Mail, 21 February 1882, Page 3

MURDEROUS BRIGANDS.

A writer in the Melbourne L.V. Advocate soys :—Edgar Allan Poe, in his weird “ Talcs of Mystery,” never conceived a more bloodcurdling denouement than that which took place a few weeks ago at a monastery near the forest of Vranyo-Selo in Hungary. This monastery, which was inhabited by eight monks, who were believed to

bo very wealthy, was attacked by a

band of brigands, but an alarm having been given, a body of soldiers came to the rescue. The brigands endeavored to barricade themselves in the monastery, and exchanged several shots with the soldiers, who were more than an hour before they could force an entrance. When they did get in they found the monks lying gagged on the floor, but could find no trace of the brigands. After the monks were set at liberty they informed their deliverers that the brigands had escaped to an underground passage leading from the cellar into the forest. The soldiers at once searched for the passage, while the monks went off to the chapel to give thanks for their delivery. The soldiers, having explored the cellar and having failed to find the door of the passage, came back to ask one of the monks to act as their guide; but they were nowhere to be seen. In the course of further investigation, however, they found the dead bodies of the eight monks in a small room, and the mystery was then solved. The brigands, seeing they could not escape, had murdered the monks, and hidden their bodies in this room, having first stripped them of their clothes and then put them on themselves. They then gagged each other to deceive the soldiers, and while the latter were searching in the cellar had made off to their fastness in the forest.