AN UNCONSCIOUS CRIME; OR, THE BERISFORD TRAGEDY.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 161, 17 July 1886, Page 7

AN UNCONSCIOUS CRIME; OR, THE BERISFORD TRAGEDY.

[We here give a synopsis of this portion of the story which has already been published, so that readers of the News who miesed the first chapters can begin with this installment and understand it just the same aB though they had.read it all from the beginning .- The hero ia Clarence Aeh worth, a relative of Dr. Berisford, of Berisford Manor, near Willowemoc, in the Cat&kill Mountains, where the doctor lived with his only child Miriam, who was betrothed to Shirley Benson, of Philadelphia, whom she had accepted as a suitor to gratify her father. Madame Barron, the housekeeper at the Manor, was anxious to have Miriam marry and go away, in the hope that she could then captivate the doctor in h"is loneliness. Jb rank Ashworth, the elder brother of Clarence, was found dead, at a place called Hanging Rock, near Berisford Manor, with a peculiar wound in hie breast. Dr. Berisford testified that the wound had been made by a three-edged instrument, and said that in his childhood he had seen an East Indian dagger that could have made cuch a wound. Clarence Aahworth arrived at Willowemoc while the coroner's inquest was in progress. He testified that his brother Fiank had but recently arrived from India, and had told him that he had shipped for home several curious weapons, among which was a dagger with three edges. Clarence soon went home, but in a short time he and his mother, who was a Berisford by birth, came on a visit to the Manor. Clarence was given a long unused room in the mansion. On retiring, he observed a box that was exactly like the one in which hia brother's curious dagger had come from India, of which he had the key. With this key he opened the box in his room, and found in it a dagger like his brother's, stained with blood. He also found a time-stained paper showing that this dagger, with another just like it, had been given to General Berisford, a famous member of the Berisford family, who, many years before, had gone to India and joined the English army there. Clarence leplaced the dagger and paper,)locked the box, and went to bed. During the night he awoke, and saw a tall, ghostlike figure, resembling Dr. Berisford, open the box, take out the dagger, and wave it fiercely in the air. Clarence and Miriam, who call each other cousin, became such warm friends that the jealousy of Shirley Benson was aroused, and he suggested to Wilson Bly and John Penfield — two detectives who had come to Willowemoc— that Clarence was the heir to his brother's great wealth, and was the only person benefited by his death. Penfield caught eagerly at the insinuation, and dogged Clarence so closely that he knocked the detective down. Penfield drew a pistol and would have shot Clarence had he not been disarmed by a singular person called "The Jooko," who lived as a hermit in the mountains. Clarence returned home with hie mother, but in a short time he was requested by "Dr. Berisford to revisit him and bring Frank's Indian daerger with him. JHe did so, and was warmly received by the doctor and Mu-iam ; also by Minnie the waiting girl, Mary Brady the cook, and Hans Munn the coachman, who were all devoted to him and unfriendly to Shirley Benson. John Penfield, who had resolved to arrest Clarence, was found dead one movning at the Hanging Rock, with exactly such a wound in his breast as had proved fatal to Frank Ashworth. Unfortunately, Clarence had gone off hunting very early the morning before, and had stayed all night with "TheJooke." As they were about to set out for Berisford Manor they heard of the death of Penfield, and hastened their departure, " The Jooke *' going to the village and Clarence to the Manor. As our hero stepped upon the piazza of the Manor House, Miriam ran to meet him, and tremblingiy exclaimed : "Come with me to the library, Cousin Clarence, before you see the others ; I must talk with you alone." What Miriam had to say is told in the chapter which follows below.]