A CHIMNEY’S SECRET

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1926, Page 2

A CHIMNEY’S SECRET

TALE OF SMUGGLING DAYS RIDE ON A STORMY NIGHT. DOCTOR’S CONTRABAND GIFT. The restoration of a famous seven-teenth-century mansion, at Wivenhoe, near Colchester, has led to some hit cresting finds. In an ancient sealed cupboard were some of the earliest matches, four inches long, half an inch wide, and tipped at both ends with sulphur. Close by is a hnge fireplace, seven feet six inches wide. The proximity of the matches to the fireplace might have added another to the long list of fire mysteries at country houses, and in that case, says the Children’s Newspaper, there would have been lost a secret compartment. Some previous owner of the old place was a smuggler, and ■here was the hiding-place of his unlawful goods! Much is heard nowadays about smuggling hi America, and it is remembered that many of the men who fought under Nelson and other British heroes were smugglers. Few people in those days thought smuggling disreputable. Prisoner of smugglers. The late Lord Malmesbury, himself a Minister of State, wrote with much zest of his own experiences at Heron Court, near Christchurch.' He was onee the prisoner of smugglers. While bird'snesting in his father’s park he saw smugglers burying kegs of brandy in a copse. They seized him, and threatened to kill him on the spot unless he remained quiet for an hour. He remained mute as a mouse while they finished their work. They made him drink

some of the liquor which they drew from a tapped keg and swear solemnly that lie would not tell of the incident. He went back to the house when released, and was scolded by hie father for his long absence, but he kept his pledge. He dared not tell of the smugglers and the hoard they bad buried in the park. Robert Louis Stevenson lived for a time at Christchurch, and must have heard the stories of the neighbourhood, for the smugglers and treasure-hunter's of some of his tales have quite the Christchurch flavour. There was a true Stevenson character in a certain Dr. Quartly who practised for fifty years at Christchurch in those old days. One stormy night he was knocked up from bed by two muffled mounted men. They commanded him to take horse and ride with them to where there was work to do. On "the way they were joined by two other men, and all rode in silence to a lonely cottage in the New Forest. There he found a young man desperately wounded. The doctor extracted a bullet from his back, and ordered the patient to be kept quiet; “Well, Tom,” said one of the men to the sufferer, “wilt thee stay here and he hanged, or shall we tip thee into the cart Poor Tom chose the cart, and away they went into the depths of the forest. The winter passed, and then before dawn one morning there a great knocking at the doctor’s door. The smugglers' had come back* to bring him a contraband gift to reward him for saving Tom’s life.

Fifteen years later, in a trip to the Avon, the doctor was the recipient of much police attention from the boatman. It was Tom, long cured of bis wound, and, it may be hoped, of smuggling.