MURDER AS A FINE ART.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 312, 31 October 1888, Page 4

MURDER AS A FINE ART.

A i<\E\v years ago the writer found his way along Ihe curving stone of Galloway to the cottage of a grim old Scotswoman, Graco McCredio. She \»as the survivor of what had become famous in Scotland, and had become known beyond the bounds of Scotand, as the Glenluce murder. On the night of May 31, 1888, Grace, then an elderly woman between 60 and 70, went to bed in the outer room or kitchen. But, before she did so, James Aiilligan, the old man for whom she acted as housekeeper, had gone to rest in the inner apartment. The only other person in the house was a young girl who assisted Grace in her household duties, and who usually crept in and slept in the bed behind her. This night all lemaincd quiet till about 1 o'clock, when the wakeful ear of age was roused by what seemed to be a foothill ; and Grace, rising on her elbow, asked, ' Who is there?' The unswei was A Heavy Rain of Blows horn an Axe / or hatchet ; ami the old woman, struggling^ out of bed, giapplod in the daik with her armed assailant, lie -poke no word, but strove to free hi a right hand, and wont wlni ling about the room in deadly wrestle with hi.s victim, who, now faint with loss of blood, tried to escape from the room. Two heavy blows laid her moaning and senseless on the thieshold, with a gash in the shoulder and others on the arm and face. In the room within a deadlier tiagedy had aheady been enacted. Milligan was e\ en now lying theic prostrate on the floor from blows of the same axe ; and when, a quarter of an hour later, the horror-struck villagers buist into a house tilled with smoke and flame, they weie too late to rescue the old man. But <!iace recovered consciousne-s, and Fought With Death for hix weeks as she had fought with the murderer, till, long before our meeting, the G rim Foatiuo confuted himself badly beaten. But the story as told by Giacc McUredio (who now rests in peace near her old master's grave) was as nothing compared with the thiilling nairativc of that midnight's? work by another witness, who is still alive Mary , whose name we conceal, fot , though no longer in Wigtonslure, she is still a young woman in opening life, was at the time of the tiagedy about 15 ; and she told her story with that rude, blunt, bieathless' simplicity which makes you feel as if you were going through the ciisis youiself. And what a ciisis it was! The girl had been asleep ut the back of the bed when she was wakened bv the midnight blows descending on the old woman : and in an agony of fear she climbed in the d'lik over the edge ; and before the struggle was ended had sciambled under the bed, which, as is usual in Scottish cottages, was sunk into a lece^s in the wall. In a few seconds the tight was over ; and nothing was heard but the convulsive breathing of her la.c piotectrcss, lying in the dooiway. Then soft hte,)^ pushed thiough the daikness — the man was moving about in his stockings, but still Trailing the Heavy Axe in his Right Hand. Suddenly theie was a pause — a noi&e — a spaik ; he had struck a match ; and with it sputtering in his left hand he '-caiched round the room, and actually prised open a locked cupboard in the wall, and swept some 18s into his pocket. (Theic weie C2OO in a room upstairs, which he missed. ) Then anothei match was struck ; and the girl, gazing with fascinated eyes from under the bed-curtain, saw the assassin move towaid the inner room, through the open door of which she now for the Hi>t time observed, with a spasm of renewed horror, her mastei's body lying on the floor. What was the deadly stranger doing ? For some time she could not tell ; but poou it was plain, lie vas throwing down the bed, furnituie, pillows, sheets, blankets, in a heap beside the b dy ot its late owner. And, Inning done so, he lighted another match, and, stooping down, >-et hie to the pile here and theie. and stood back to watch the result. But at thi^ point theie happened something more full of ument teiror than anything in Do Quineey'* London narrative. While the gill was ga/ing at the side-face of the assassin — gazinsi >o fixedly that she was able to give the wtitoi a fair geneial description of him -the fellow suddenly turned round, and walked stiaight acioss the loom to where she crouched under the bed. ' Why 1 difl not set earn out,' she said, wringing her hands as she spoke, ' 1 don't know to this hour. I ')nly know 1 could not.' For half a minute, which seemed like halt an eternity, he stood above her ; his stockinged ie'^t actually within six inches of her face. And then again theie was a sctatch, a sputter, a Hash of light: and slowly and coolly —all his motions weie delibeiate — he applied the match, and Set Fire to the Hangings and covcilet of the b<ul under which the un wit e^s eiouchcd. The tensions and agon> of the scene could not last much lon gci. By this time thick volumes ot smoke pomod fiom the inner room. The murdciei, who was short and thickset, with a slight moustache and dressed like an oidinary working man, put down his axe and looked round thiough Ihe reflection of the rising fires, to find hi^ cap. He missed it. But it w,is no time to delay. In anotner second ho was striding along the passage to a back door ot the house, which led to the gat den and the moor behind ; and the girl, all ear, bent bicathic^sly forward horn her den. But the moment she heard the back dooi slammed softly leaped up, rushed out into the passage, over Grace lying in her blood, and through the front dooi, and Flung Herself in a Hysterical Heap on the doorstep of the opposite house. In half a minute the whole inhabitants of Glenluce weie at their windows. In three minutes more they were doweling round the burning house, amid wailings ot the woman and muttcnngs of ' murder' by the men. At the very crisis of the crime, in the dead stillness ot the night, just after the butchery had taken place within, wheels were heard passing out&ide along the winding street of the village. No part of the girl's story was more impressive than the way in which she told how her heart leaped at the sound, and how it died again within her when she saw the man with the axe exhibit not the least alarm as the vehicle came up to the tiont door and rolled away m the other direction. Lastly, not only was The Undoubted Murderer seen, not only did he leave behind the tools of his ' art ;' but his cap was found in the room and recognised. A shopkeeper in the next town alleged that he had sold it to someone - to whom he could not say — within a low months. And yet with all this mass of suggestion, down to the time of our visit, and, as far as wo know to this hour, the actor has never been found or even traced. Somewhere around this globe, somewhere amid the shifting masses of our Anglo-American race, there is a middle aged, thick-feet, imperturbable man, who carries in his hot heart the secret of that midsummer night of June.