 CHAPTER III. THE CAMPTAN MISTRY 1. The ordinary historical mystery is, at least so far, clear that one or other of two solutions must be right, if we only knew which. Perkin Warbeck was the rightful king, or he was an imposter. Giacopo Stuardo at Naples, 1669, was the eldest son of Charles II, or he was a humbug. The man in the iron mask was certainly either Mattioli or Eustach Dauver. James VI conspired against Gowrie, or Gowrie conspired against James VI, and so on. There is reason and human nature at the back of these puzzles. But at the back of the camped in mystery there is not a glimmer of reason or of sane human nature, except on one hypothesis which I shall offer. The occurrences are, to all appearance, motiveless, as the events in a feverish dream. The whole matter is dark and mysterious, which we must therefore leave unto him, who alone knoweth all things, in his due time, to reveal and to bring to light. So says the author of, a true and perfect account of the examination, confession, trial, and execution of Joan Perry and her two sons, John and Richard Perry, for the supposed murder of Will Harris and gentlemen, being one of the most remarkable occurrences which hath happened in the memory of man, sent in a letter by Sir Thomas Overbury, a Burton, in the county of Glaucus Tricent, and one of his majesty's justices of the peace. To Thomas Shirley, Doctor of Physic in London, also Mr. Harrison's own account, etc. London printed for John Atkinson near the chapter house in St. Paul's churchyard, no date, but apparently of 1676. Such is the vast and breathless title of a pamphlet which, by undeserved good luck, I have just purchased. The writer, Sir Thomas Overbury, the nephew and heir, says Mr. John Padgett, of the unhappy victim of the infamous Countess of Somerset, who had the elder Overbury poisoned in the tower, was the justice of the peace who acted as judged instruction in the case of Harrison's disappearance. 5. Footnote 5, Padgett Paradoxes and Puzzles, Page 342, Blackwoods, 1874 To come to the story. In 1660 William Harrison, gentlemen, was steward or factor to the viscount as Campden in the Chipping Camp in Glaucus Tricent, a single streeted town among the Cotswold Hills. The lady did not live in Campden House, whose owner burned it in the great rebellion, despite the rebels, as Castle Terrim was burned by its Jacobite Lord in the 15th. Harrison inhabited a portion of the building which had escaped destruction. He had been for fifty years a servant of the Hickises and Campdens. His age was seventy, which deepens the mystery. He was married and had offspring, including Edward, his eldest son. On a market day in 1659 Mr. Harrison's house was broken into at high noon, while he and his whole family were at the lecture in church, a puritan form of edification. A ladder had been placed against the wall, the bars of a window on the second story had been wrenched away with a plowshare, which was left in the room. And one hundred and forty pounds of Lady Campden's money were stolen. The robber was never discovered, a curious fact in a small and lonely village. The times, however, were disturbed and a wandering cavalier or round-head soldier may have cracked the crib. Not many weeks later Harrison's servant Perry was heard crying for help in the garden. He showed a sheep-pick with a hacked handle and declared that he had been set upon by two men in white with naked swords, and had defended himself with his rustic tool. It is curious that Mr. John Padgett, a writer of great acuteness and for many years police magistrate, a Hammersmith, says nothing of the robbery of 1659 and of Perry's crazy conduct in the garden. Perry's behavior there and his hysterical invention of the two armed men in white give the key to his character. The two men in white were never traced, of course, but later we meet three men, not less logitious and even more mysterious. They appear to have been three men in Buckrum. Footnote 6, see his paradoxes and puzzles, pages 337 through 370, and, for good reading, see the book Passam. At all events in quiet Campden, adventures obviously occurred to the unadventurous. They culminated in the following year on August 16, 1660. Harrison left his house in the morning and walked the two miles to Charringworth to collect his lady's rents. The autumn day closed in and between eight and nine o'clock old Mrs. Harrison sent the servant John Perry to meet his master on the way home. Lights were also left burning in Harrison's window. That night neither master nor man returned, and it is odd that the younger Harrison, Edward, did not seek for his father till very early next morning. He had the convenience for nocturnal search of a moon which rose late. In the morning Edward went out and met Perry returning alone. He had not found his master. The pair walked to Ebrington, a village halfway between Campden and Charringworth, and learned that Harrison had called on the previous evening as he moved home through Ebrington at the house of one Daniel. The hour is not given, but Harrison certainly disappeared when just beyond Ebrington, within less than a mile from Campden. Edward and Perry next heard that a poor woman had picked up on the highway beyond Ebrington near some winds or furs, a hat, band, and comb, which were Harrison's. They were found within about a half mile of his own house. The band was bloody, the hat and comb were hacked and cut. Please observe the precise words of Sir Thomas Overbury, the justice who took the preliminary examinations. The hat and comb being hacked and cut and the band bloody, but nothing more could there be found. Therefore the hat and comb were not on Harrison's head when they were hacked and cut, otherwise they must have been bloodstained. The band warned about the throat was bloody, but there was no trace of blood on the road. This passage contains the key to the puzzle. On hearing of the discovery of these objects all the people rushed to hunt for Harrison's corpse, which they did not find. An old man like Harrison was not likely to stay at Charringworth very late, but it seems that whatever occurred on the highway happened after twilight. Suspicion fell upon John Perry, who was hailed before the narrator, Sir Thomas Overbury, J.P. Perry, said that after starting for Charringworth to seek his master on the previous evening, about 8.45 p.m., he met by the way William Reed of Campden and explained to him that as he was timid in the dark he would go back and take Edward Harrison's horse in return. Perry did, as he had said, and Reed left him at Mr. Harrison's court gate. Perry dallyed there, till one pierce came past, and with pierce he did not say why. He went a bow shot into the fields, and so back once more to Harrison's gate. He now lay for an hour in a hen house. He rose at midnight, and again the moon having now risen and dispelled his fears. He started for Charringworth. He lost his way in a mist, slept by the roadside, proceeded in the dawn to Charringworth, and found that Harrison had been there on the previous day. Then he came back and met Edward Harrison on his way to seek his father at Charringworth. Perry's story is like a tale told by an idiot, but Reed, Pierce, and two men at Charringworth corroborated as far as their knowledge went. Certainly, Perry had been in company with Reed and Pierce, say between nine and ten on the previous night. Now, if evil had befallen Harrison, it must have been before ten at night. He would not stay so late, if sober, at Charringworth. Was he usually sober? The cool way in which his wife and son took his absence suggests that he was a late-wandering old boy. They may have expected Perry to find him in his cups and tuck him up comfortably at Charringworth or at Ebrington. Till August twenty-four, Perry was detained in prison or odd to say at the inn. He told various tales a tinker or a servant had murdered his master and hidden him in a bean-rick, where, on search being made, non-est inventus. Harrison and the rents he had collected were vanished in the Azure. Perry now declared that he would tell all to Overbury and to no other man. To him, Perry averred that his mother and brother, Joan and Richard Perry, had murdered Harrison. It was his brother who, by John Perry's advice and connivance, had robbed the house in the previous year, while John had a Halibi being at church. The brother said John buried the money in the garden. It was sought for, but was not found. His story of the two men in white, who had previously attacked him in the garden, was a lie, he said. I may add that it was not the lie of a sane man. Perry was conspicuously crazy. He went on with his fables, his mother and brother he declared had often asked him to tell them when his master went to collect rents. He had done so after Harrison started for Charringworth on the morning of August sixteen. John Perry next gave an account of his expedition with his brother in the evening of the fatal day, an account which was incompatible with his previous tale of his doings and with the authentic evidence of Reed and Pierce. Their honest version destroyed Perry's new falsehood. He declared that Richard Perry and he had dogged Harrison as he came home at night into Lady Campden's grounds. Harrison had used a key to the private gate. Richard followed him into the grounds. John Perry, after a brief stroll, joined him there and found his mother. How did she come thither? And Richard, standing over the prostrate Harrison, whom Richard incontinently strangled. They seized Harrison's money and meant to put his body in the great sink by Wallington's mill. John Perry left them and knew not whether the body was actually thrown into the sink. In fact, non-Eston Ventus in the sink, any more than in the bean rake. John next introduced his meeting with Pierce but quite forgot that he had also met Reed. And did not account for that part of his first story, which Reed and Pierce had both corroborated. The hat, comb, and band John said that he himself had carried away from Harrison's body. Had cut them with his knife and thrown them into the highway. Whence the blood on the band came, he neglected to say. On the strength of this impossible forago of insane falsehoods, John and Richard Perry were arrested and brought before Overbury. Not only the sink, but the camped in fish pools and the ruinous parts of the house were vainly searched in quest of Harrison's body. On August 25 the three Perrys were examined by Overbury, and Richard and the mother denied all that John laid to their charge. John persisted in his story, and Richard admitted that he and John had spoken together on the morning of the day when Harrison vanished, but nothing passed between them to that purpose. As the three were being brought back from Overbury's house to camp an unfortunate thing happened. John was going foremost when Richard, a good way behind, dropped a ball of inkle from his pocket. One of his guards picked it up and Richard said that it was only his wife's hair lace. At one end, however, was a slipknot. The finder took it to John, who, being a good way in front, had not seen his brother drop it. On being shown the string John shook his head and said to his sorrow he knew it, for that was the string his brother strangled his master with. To this circumstance John swore at the ensuing trial. The Assises were held in September, and the Perrys were indicted both for the robbery in 1659 and the murder in 1660. They pleaded guilty to the first charge, as someone in court whispered to them to do, for the crime was covered by the act of pardon and oblivion passed by Charles II at his happy restoration. If they were innocent of the robbery, as probably they were, they acted foolishly in pleading guilty. We hear of no evidence against them for the robbery except John's confession which was evidence perhaps against John, but was not against them. They thus damaged their case for if they were really guilty of the robbery from Harrison's house, they were the most likely people in the neighborhood to have robbed him again and murdered him. Very probably they tied the rope around their own necks by taking advantage of the good kings indemnity. They later withdrew their confession and probably were innocent of the theft in 1659. Transcriber's note, original, has 1559. On the charge of murder they were not tried in September. Sir Christopher Turner would not proceed because the body of Harrison was not found. There was no corpus delicti, no evidence that Harrison was really dead. Meanwhile John Perry, as if to demonstrate his lunacy, declared that his mother and brother had tried to poison him in prison. At the spring of ceases in 1661, Sir B. Hyde, less legal than Sir Christopher Turner, did try the parries on the charge of murder. How he could do this does not appear for the account of the trial is not in the record house, and I am unable at present to trace it. In the Armenian magazine John Wesley publishes a story of a man who was hanged for murdering another man whom he afterwards met in one of the Spanish colonies of South America. I shall not here interrupt the tale of the parries by explaining how a hanged man met a murdered man, but the anecdote proves that to inflict capital punishment for murder without proof that the murder has been committed is not only an illegal but an injudicious proceeding. Probably it was assumed that Harrison, if alive, would have given signs of life in the course of nine or ten months. At the trial in spring all three parries pleaded not guilty, John's confession being proved against him. He told them he was then mad and knew not what he had said. There must have been some evidence against Richard. He declared that his brother had accused others besides him. Being asked to prove this he answered that most of those that had given evidence against him knew it, but named none. So evidence had been given, perhaps to the effect that Richard had in flush of money, but by whom and to what effect we do not know. The parries were probably not of the best repute. The mother, Joan, was supposed to be a witch. Discharge was seldom brought against popular well-living people. How intense was the fear of witches at that date we know from the stories and accounts of trials in Glanville's Satechismus Triumphantus. The neighbors probably held that Joan Perry would, as a witch, be none the wire of a hanging. She was put to death first under the belief that any hypnotic or other unholy influence of hers which prevented her sons from confessing would be destroyed by her death. We are not aware the post-hypnotic suggestion is removed by the death of the suggestor. The experiment has not been tried. The experiment failed in Joan's case. Poor Richard, who was hanged next, could not induce the dogged and surly Joan to clear his character by a dying declaration. Such declarations were then held irrefragable evidence, at least in Scotland, except when, as in the case of George Sprott, hanged for the gallery conspiracy. It did not suit the Presbyterians to believe the dying man. When John was being turned off, he said that he knew nothing of his master's death nor what was become of him, but they might, hereafter, possibly hear. Did John know something? It would not surprise me if he had an inkling of the real state of the case. They did hear, but what they heard and what I have now to tell was perfectly incredible. When some years, too, apparently had passed, Will Harrison, gentleman like the three silly youths in their folk rhyme, came herpling him. Where had the old man been? He explained in a letter to Sir Thomas Overbury, but his tale is as hard to believe as that of John Perry. He states that he left his house in the afternoon, not the morning, of Thursday, August 16, 1660. He went to Charingworth to collect rents, but Lady Campden's tenants were all out harvesting. August seems an odd month for rent collecting when one thinks of it. They came home late, which delayed Harrison till the close of the evening. He only received twenty-three pounds, which John Perry said at his first examination in 1660, had been paid by one Edward Pleisterer and Pleisterer corroborated. Harrison then walked homeward in the dusk, probably, and near Ebrington where the road was narrow and bordered by winds. There he met one horseman who said, Art thou there? Afraid of being ridden over, Harrison struck the horse on the nose and the rider with a sword struck at him and stabbed him in the side. It was at this point of the road where the winds grew, that the cut hat and bloody band were found, but a thrust in the side would not make a neckband bloody. Two other horsemen here came up, one of them wounded Harrison in the thigh. They did not now take his twenty-three pounds, but placed him behind one of them on the horseback, handcuffed him, and threw a great cloak over him. Now is it likely that high women would carry handcuffs which closed, says Harrison, with a spring and a snap? The story is pure fiction and bad at that. Suppose that kidnapping, not robbery, was the motive which would account for the handcuffs. What had any mortal to gain by kidnapping, for the purpose of selling him into slavery, a gentleman of seventy years of age? In the night they took Harrison's money and tumbled me down a stone pit. In an hour they dragged him out again, and he naturally asked what they wanted with him as they had his money already. One of these miscreants wounded Harrison again and stuffed his pockets full of a great quantity of money. If they had a great quantity of money, what did they want with twenty-three pounds? We hear of no other robberies in the neighborhood, of which misdeeds the money might have been the profits. And why must Harrison carry the money? It has been suggested that, to win popular favor, they represented themselves as smugglers, and Harrison with the money as their gallant purser wounded in some heroic adventure. They next rode till late on August 17 and then put Harrison down bleeding and sorely bruised with the carriage of the money at a lonely house. Here they gave their victim broth and brandy. On Saturday they rode all day to a house where they slept, and on Sunday they brought Harrison to deal and laid him down on the ground. This was about three in the afternoon. As they wanted to make for the sea, they would naturally have gone to the west coast. While one fellow watched Harrison, two met a man, and I heard them mention seven pounds. The man to whom seven pounds were mentioned, Renshaw was his name as Harrison afterwards, heard, where, said that he thought Harrison would die before he could be put on board a ship. Harrison was, however, put on board a casual vessel and remained in the ship for six weeks. Where was the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead is all the sailors know. Harrison does not say into what foam of perilous seas and ferry lands for Lorne the ship went wandering for six mortal weeks, like Lord Bateman. He sailed east and he sailed west, until he came to fame Turkey, where he was taken and put in prison till of his life he was weary. Then the master of the ship came and told me and the rest who were in the same condition that he discovered three Turkish ships, the rest who were in the same condition. We are to understand that a whole cargo of Harrison's was kidnapped and consigned captive to a vessel launched on ocean, on the off chance that the captain might meet three Turkish rovers who had snapped them up. At this rate of carrying on there must have been disappearances as strange as Harrison's from dozens of English parishes in August 1660. Had a crew of kidnappers been taking captives for purposes of private fiscal policy they would have shipped them to the Virginia plantations where Turkish galleys did not venture and they would not have kidnapped men of seventy. Moreover kidnappers would not damage their captives by stabbing them in the side and thigh when no resistance was made as was done to Harrison. The rest who were in the same condition were dumped down near Smyrna where the valuable Harrison was sold to a grave physician. This Turkey was eighty seven years of age and preferred Crowland and Lincolnshire before all other places in England. No inquiries are known to have been made about a Turkish medical man who once practiced at Crowland and Lincolnshire though if he ever did he was likely to be remembered in the district. This Turkey employed Harrison in the still room and as a hand in the cotton fields where he once knocked his slave down with his fist pretty well for a Turk of eighty seven. He also gave Harrison whom he usually employed in the chemical department of his business a silver bowl double guilt to drink in and named him bowl his way of pronouncing bowl. No doubt he had acquired a Lincolnshire accent. This Turk felt ill on a Thursday and died on a Saturday when Harrison tramped to the nearest port bowl and all. Two men in a Hamburg ship refused to give him a passage but a third for the price of his silver guilt bowl. Let him come aboard. Harrison was landed without even his bowl at Lisbon where he instantly met a man from Wisbeck in Lincolnshire. This Good Samaritan gave Harrison wine, strong waters, eight stivers, and his passage to Dover once he came back to Campton much to the amazement of mankind. We do not hear the names of the ship and skipper that brought Harrison from Lisbon to Dover. Renshaw, the man to whom seven pounds were mentioned, is the only person named in this delirious tissue of nonsense. The editor of our pamphlet says many question the truth of this account Mr. Harrison gives of himself and his transportation, believing he was never out of England. I do not wonder at their skepticism. Harrison had all his days been a man of sober life and conversation we are told and the odd thing is that he left behind him a considerable sum of his lady's money in his house. He did not see any of the parries on the night of his disappearance. The editor admits that Harrison, as an article of merchandise, was not worth his freight to deal, still less to Smyrna. His son in his absence became Lady Campton's steward and behaved but ill in that situation. Some suspected that this son arranged the kidnapping of Harrison, but if so why did he secure the hanging of John Perry in chains on Broadway Hill, where we might daily see him? That might be a blind, but young Harrison could not expect John Perry to assist him by accusing himself and his brother and mother, which was the most unlooked-for event in the world. Nor could he know that his father would come home from Charingworth on August 16, 1660 in the dark, and so arranged for three horsemen in possession of a heavy weight of specie to stab and carry off the aged sire. Young Harrison had not a great fardo of money to give them, and if they were already so rich, what had they to gain by taking Harrison to deal and putting him with others in the same condition on board a casual ship? They could have left him in the stone pit. He knew not who they were, and the longer they rode by daylight with a hatless, handcuffed, and sorely wounded prisoner, his pockets overburdened with gold, the more risk of detection they ran. A company of three men ride in broad daylight through England, from Glockus to Shure to Deal. Behind one of them sits a wounded and hatless and handcuffed captive, his pockets bulging with money. Nobody suspects anything. No one calls the attention of a magistrate to this extraordinary demarch. It is too absurd. The story told by Harrison is conspicuously and childishly false. At every baiting place, at every inn, these weird riders must have been challenged. If Harrison told truth, he must have named the ship and skipper that brought him to Dover. Dismissing Harrison's myth, we ask, what could account for his disappearance? He certainly walked on the evening of August 16 to within about a mile of his house. He would not have done that had he been bent on a senile amor involving his absence from home, and had that scheme of pleasure been in his mind, he would have provided himself with money. Again, a fit of ambulatory somnambulism and the emergence of a split or secondary personality with forgetfulness of his real name and address is not likely to have seized on him in that very moment and place. If it did, as there were no railways, he could not rush off in a crowd and pass unnoticed through the country. Once more, the theory of ambulatory somnambulism does not account for his hacked hat and bloody band found near the winds on the road behind Ebrington. Nor does his own story account for them. He was stabbed in the side and thigh, he says. This would not cut his head or ensangue on his band. On the other hand, he would leave pools and tracks of blood on the road, the highway. But nothing more could there be found, no pools or traces of blood on the road. It follows that the hacked hat and bloody band were a designed false trail, not left there by John Perry as he falsely swore, but by some other persons. The inference is that for some reason Harrison's presence at Campton was inconvenient to somebody. He had lived through most troubled times, and had come into a changed state of affairs with new masters. He knew some secret of the troubled times, he was a witness better out of the way. He may conceivably have held a secret to bore on the case of one of the regicides, or that affected private interests, for he was the trusted servant of a great family. He was therefore spirited away, a trail certainly false, the hacked hat and bloody band was laid. By an amazing coincidence, his servant John Perry went more or less mad, he was not sane on the evening of Thursday August 16, and accused himself, his brother and mother. Harrison was probably never far from Campton during the two or three years of his disappearance. It was obviously made worth his while to tell his absurd story on his return, and to accept the situation. No other hypothesis colligates the facts. What Harrison knew why his absence was essential we cannot hope to discover, but he never was a captive in famed turkey. Mr. Padgett writes, it is impossible to assign a sufficient motive for kidnapping the old man. Much profit was not likely to arise from the sale of the old man as a slave. Obviously there was no profit, especially as the old man was delivered in a wounded and imperfect condition. But a motive for keeping Harrison out of the way is only hard to seek because we do not know the private history of his neighbors. Roundheads among them may have had excellent reasons under the restoration for sequestering Harrison till the revenges of the restoration were accomplished. On this view the mystery almost ceases to be mysterious. For such mad self-accusations as that of John Perry are not uncommon. Footnote 7 Not only have I failed to trace the records of the assays at which the Perry's were tried, but the newspapers of 1660 seem to contain no account of the trial. As they do in the case of the drummer of Tedworth 1663. And Ms. E. M. Thompson, who kindly undertook the search, has not even found a ballad or broadside on The Camp and Wonder in the British Museum. The pamphlet of 1676 has frequently been republished in whole, or in part, as in State Trials, Volume 14, in appendix to the case of Captain Green, which C. Infra, page 193, et sec. End of Chapter 3 Recording by Sissinak Chapter 4 Of Historical Mysteries This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Kay Hand Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang Chapter 4 The Case of Alan Breck Who Killed the Red Fox? What was the secret that the Celts would not communicate to Mr. R. L. Stevenson when he was writing Kidnapped? Like William of Delorene, I know, but may not tell. At least I know all that the Celts knows. The great-grandfather and grandfather of a friend of mine were in with James Stuart of the Glens, the victim of Hanovarian injustice in a potato field near the road from Balakulish Ferry to Abyn, when they heard a horse galloping at a breakneck pace. Whoever the rider is, said poor James, he is not riding his own horse. The galloper shouted, Glenur has been shot. Well, said James to his companion, whoever did it, I am the man that will hang for it. Hanged he was. The pit in which his gibbet stood is on the crest of a circular gno, or hummock, on the east side of the Balakulish Hotel, overlooking the ferry across the narrows, where the tide runs like a great swift river. I have had the secret from two sources, the secret which I may not tell. One informant received it from his brother, who, when he came to man's estate, was taken apart by his uncle. You are old enough to know now, said that kinsman, and I tell you that it may not be forgotten. The gist of the secret is merely that one might gather from the report of the trial that though Allen Breck was concerned in the murder of Campbell of Glenur, he was not alone in it. The truth is, according to tradition, that as Glenur rode on the fatal day from Fort William to his home in Abyn, the way it was lined with marksmen of the Camerons of Alakabur, lurking with their guns among the brushwood and behind the rocks. But their hearts failed them, no trigger was drawn, and when Glenur landed on the Abyn side of the Balakulish ferry, he said, I am safe now that I am out of my mother's country, his mother having been of the clan Cameron. But he had to reckon with the man with the gun, who was lurky in the woods of Lettermore, the great hanging coppers, about three quarters of a mile on the Abyn side of Balakulish ferry. The gun was not one of the two dilapidated pieces shown at the trial of James of the Glens, nor, am I told, was it the fast-nacloïch gun. The real homicidal gun was found some years ago in a hollow tree. People remember these things well in Abyn and Glenco, though the affair is 150 years old, and though there are daily steamers bringing the newspapers. There is even a railway, not remarkable for speed, while tourists, English, French, and American, are forever passing the view to Glenco and to write their names in the hotel book after luncheon, then flying to other scenes. There has even been a strike of long duration at the Balakulish quarries, and labor leaders have prorated to the Celts. But Gaelic is still spoken, second sight is nearly as common as short sight. You may really hear the ferry music if you bend your ear, on a still day, to the grass of the ferry know. Only two generations back a ferry boy lived in a now ruinous house, noted in the story of the massacre of Glenco beside the Brawling River, and a woman, stolen by the ferries, returned for an hour to her husband, who became very unpopular as he neglected the means for her rescue. I think he failed to throw a dirk over her shoulder. Every now and then mysterious lights may be seen, even by the Sasanak, speeding down the road to Calart, on the opposite side of the narrow sea-lock, ascending the mountain and running down into the salt water. The causes of these lights and of the lights on the burial isle of St. Mun, in the middle of the sea-strait, remain a mystery. Thus the country is still a country of prehistoric beliefs and of fairly accurate traditions. For example, at the trial of James Stewart for the murder of Glenur, one McCall gave damaging evidence, the McCalls being a sept subordinate to the McGeans or McDonald's of Glenco, who, by the way, had no hand in the murder. Till recently these McCalls were still disliked for the part played by the witness, and were named King George's McCalls. But we must come to the case of Allen Breck, to understand it, some knowledge of topography is necessary. Leaving Obann by steamer, you keep on the inside of the long narrow island of Lismore, and reach the narrow sea inland of Loch Creran on your right. The steamer does not enter it, but, taking a launch or a boat, you go down Loch Creran. On your left is the peninsula of Appen. Its famous green hills occupy the space bounded by Loch Creran on the south and Glenco on the north. Lending near the head of Loch Creran, a walk of two miles takes you to the old house of Fastnacloch, where Allen Breck was wanted to stay. Till two or three years ago it belonged to the stewards of Fastnacloch, cadets of the chief, the Laird of Appen. All Appen was a steward country and loyal to the king over the water, their kinsman. About a mile from Fastnacloch, further inland, is the rather gloomy house of Glenir, the property of Campbell of Glenir, the red fox who was shot on the road under Lettermore. Walking across the peninsula to Appen House, you pass Acharn in Dorar, the farm of James Steward of the Glens, himself an illegitimate kinsman of the Laird of Appen. To the best of my memory the cottage is still standing and has a new roof of corrugated iron. It is an ordinary highland cottage and Allen, when he stayed with James, his kinsman and guardian, slept in the barn. Appen House is a large playing-country house close to the sea. Further northeast, the house of Archschild standing high above the sea is visible from the steamer going to Fort William. At Archschild, Rob Roy fought a sword and target duel with the Laird, and Archschild led the stewards in the rising of 1745. Appen, the chief, held aloof. The next place of importance is Ballochulich House, also an old house of Stewart of Ballochulich. It is on the right hand of the road from Ballochulich Pier to Glencoe, beneath a steep wooded hill, down which runs the barn where Allen Breck was fishing on the morning of the day of Glenyer's murder, done at a point on the road three-quarters of a mile to the southwest of Ballochulich House, where Allen had slept on the previous night. Road in the house, the road passes on the south side of the Salt Lock Levin, not Queen Mary's Lock Levin. Here is Ballochulich Ferry, crossing to Lockever. Following the road, you come opposite the house of Carnock, then possessed by McDonald's. The house has been pulled down. There is a good recent ghost story about that business. And the road now enters Glencoe. On high hills, well to the left of the road, and above Lock Levin, are Cory Nacky and Colis Cone, the Ferry of the Dogs, overtopping the narrows of Lock Levin. Just opposite the house of Carnock, on the Cameron side of Lock Levin, is the house of Callart, Mrs. Cameron, Lucy's. Here and at Carnock, as at Fasnicoge, Aracharn, and Ballochulich, Allen Breck was much at home among his cousins. From Lock Levin north to Fort William, with its English garrison, all is a Cameron country. Campbell of Glenyer was an outpost of Wigory and Campbell's, in a land of loyal stewards, Camerons and McDonald's, or McGeans of Glencoe. Of the Camerons, the gentle Lock Heel had died in France. His son, a boy, was abroad. The interests of the clan were represented by Cameron of Fasnifern, Lock Heel's uncle, living a few miles west by north of Fort William. Fasnifern, a well educated man and Burgess of Glasgow, had not also been out with Prince Charles. But for reasons into which I would rather not enter, was not well trusted by the government. Ardschiel also was in exile, and his tenants, under James Stewart of the Glen's, loyally paid rent to him, as well as to the commissioners of his forfeited estates. The country was seething with feuds among the Camerons themselves, due to the plundering, by blank, of the treasure left by Prince Charles in the hands of Clooney. The state of affairs was such that the English commander in Fort William declared that if known, it would shock even Lockaber consciences. A great ox hath trodden on my tongue, as to this business. Despite the robbery of Prince Charles's gold, deep poverty prevailed. In February 1749, Campbell of Glenier had been appointed Factor for Government over the forfeited estates of Ardschiel, previously managed by James Stewart of the Glen's, of Lockiel and of Callert. In the summer of 1751, Glenier evicted James from a farm, and in April 1752, took measures for evicting other farmers on Ardschiel estates. Such measures were almost unheard of in the country, and had years before, caused some agrarian outrages among Gordons and Camerons. These were appeased by the King over the water, James VIII, and III. James Stewart in April 1752 went to Edinburgh and obtained a legal cyst, or suspension of the evictions, against Glenier, which was withdrawn on Glenier's application, who came home from Edinburgh and intended to turn the tenants out on May 15, 1752. They were assailed merely as of Jacobite name and tendencies. Meanwhile, Allen Breck, who had deserted the Hanoverian army after Prestonpans, had joined Prince Charles, fought at Coladin, escaped to France, and entered the French army, was lodging about Appian among his cousins, perhaps doing a little recruiting for King Louis. He was a tall, thin man marked with smallpox. Cruising about the country also was another Jacobite soldier, the Sergeant Moore, a Cameron later betrayed by Blank of Blank, who robbed the Prince's hoard of gold. But the Sergeant Moore had nothing to do as has been fancied with the murder of Glenier. The state of the country was ticklish. Prince Charles expected to invade with Swedish forces under the famous Marshal Keith by the connivans of Frederick the Great, and he had sent to lot Gary, Dr. Archibald Cameron and others, to feel the pulse of the Western clans. As government knew all about these intrigues from Pickle the Spy, they were evicting Jacobite tenants from Art Shield's lands, and meant to do the same by agency of Campbell of Glenier in Lockabur, Lockheel's country. On Monday, May 11th, Campbell, who intended to do the evictions on May 15th, left Glenier for Fort William on business. The distance is computed at 16 miles by the Old Hill Road. Allen Brack on the 11th was staying at Fastinacloch, near Glenier, where the fishing is very good. When Glenier moved north to Fort William, Allen went to James Stewart's College of Artsharn. Glenier's move was talked of, and that evening Allen changed his own blue coat, scarlet vest, and black velvet breeches, for a dark short coat with silver buttons, a blue bonnet, and trousers. The Highlanders had been disquilted, all belonging to James Stewart. He usually did make these changes when residing with friends. In these clothes, next day, Tuesday, May 12th, Allen, with young Fastinacloch, walked to the Carnock, the house of MacDonald of Glencoe, situated just where the water of Coe or Kona enters Lock 11. The Dowager of the house was natural sister of James of the Glens, and full sister of the exiled Stewart of Art Shield. From Carnock, Allen, on the same day, crossed the sea strait to Callart's opposite, where Mrs. Cameron was another half-sister to James of the Glens. On Wednesday, Allen recrossed, called at Carnock, and went to say at Ballochulich House. On Thursday, when Glenier would certainly return home by Ballochulich ferry, Allen, about midday, was seen to go fishing up Ballochulich Bern, where he caught no trout, and I do not wonder at it. The theory of the prosecution was that, from the high ground to the left of the Bern, he watched the ferry, having one or two guns, though how he got them unobserved to the place is the difficulty. He could not have walked the roads from our charm unobserved with a gun, for the Highlanders had been disarmed. At this point he must have had the assistance and the gun of the other man. Allen came down from the hill, asked the ferryman if Glenier had crossed, and returned to his point of observation. About five o'clock in the afternoon, Glenier, with a nephew of his, Mungo Campbell, a rider or solicitor, crossed the ferry and was greeted and accompanied for three-quarters of a mile on his homeward way by old steward of Ballochulich, who turned back and went to his house. A sheriff's officer walked ahead of Glenier, who, like Mungo, was mounted. Behind both mounted was Campbell's servant John Mackenzie. The old road was and is a rough track through thick coppers. There came a shot, and Glenier, pierced by two balls, fell, and died. John Mackenzie, Glenier's servant, now rode onwards at a great gallop to find Campbell of Balavutolan, and on his way came to Archon and met James Stewart with the two ancestors of my friend, as already described. He gave the news to James, who brung his hands and expressed great concern at what had happened, as what might bring innocent people to trouble. In fact he had once or oftener, when drinking, expressed a desire to have a shot at Glenier and so had Allen. But James was a worthy sensible man when sober and must have known that while he could not frighten the commissioners of forfeited estates by shooting their agent, he was certain to be suspected if their agent was shot. As a matter of fact, as we shall see, he had taken active steps to secure the presence of a Fort William solicitor at the evictions on Friday May 15th to put in a legal protest. But he thought it unadvisable to walk three or four miles and look after Glenier's corpse. The Highlanders to this day have a strong dread or dislike of corpses. That night James baited his people to hide his arms, four swords, a long Spanish gun, and a shorter gun, neither of which weapons in fact did the trick, nor could be depended on not to misfire. Where, meanwhile, was Allen? In the dusk above Balachulish house he was seen by Kate McKinnons, a maid of the house. They talked of the murder and she told Donald Stewart, a very young man, son-in-law of Balachulish, where Allen was, out on the hillside. Donald Stewart averred that, on hearing from Kate that Allen wanted to see him. Kate denied that she said this. He went to the hill, accused Allen of the crime, and was told in reply that Allen was innocent, though as a deserter from the Hanoverian army, and likely to be suspected, he must flee the country. Other talk passed, to which we shall return. At three in the morning of Friday, May 15th, Allen knocked at the window of Carnock House, Glencoes. Passed the news, was asked no questions, refused a drink, and made for the shielding, or summer hut, high on the hill of Colus Noacan, when she looked down on the narrows of Lock Levin. There we leave Allen for the moment, merely remarking that he had no money, no means of making his escape. As he is supposed by the prosecution to have planned the slaying of Glenure with James Stewart on May 11th, it seems plain that James would then have given him money to use in his escape, or, if he had no money by him, would have sent at once, to Fort William, or elsewhere, to raise it. He did not do this, and neither at Carnock, Calert, or Balachulish House, did Allen receive any money. But on May 12th, when Allen went to Carnock and Calert, James sent a servant to a very old Mr. Stewart, father of Charles Stewart, notary public. The father was a notary also, and James, who wanted a man of law to be at the evictions on May 15th, and thought that Charles Stewart was absent in Moidart, conceived that the old gentleman would serve the turn. But his messenger missed the venerable sportsman who had gone fishing. Learning later that Charles had returned from Moidart, James at 8am on May 14th, the day of the murder, sent a servant to Charles at Fort William, bidding him to come to the evictions on May 15th, as everything must go wrong without a person that can act, and that I can trust. In a post-grip he added, as I have no time to write to William, Stewart, let him send down immediately 8L to pay for four milk cows I bought for his wife at Ardeshield. His messenger had also orders to ask William Stewart for the money. Nothing could seem more harmless, but the prosecution might have argued that this letter was, as to the coming of the notary, a blind and that the real object was, under the plea of sending for the notary, to send to the messenger for William Stewart's 8L, destined to aid Allen in his escape. There is no proof or even suggestion that, on May 12th, James had asked old Mr. Stewart to send money for Allen's use, or had asked William Stewart, as having none by him, he would have done. That is, if James had concerted the murder with Allen. If, on May 14th, James was trying to raise money to help a man who, as he knew, would need it after committing a murder on that day, he showed strange want to foresight. He might not get the money, or might not to be able to send it to Allen. In fact, that day James did not get the money. The prosecution argued that the money was sent for on May 14th, to help Allen Breck, and did not even try to show that James had sent for the money on May 12th, when it would have arrived in good time. Indeed, James did not, on May 12th, send any message to William Stewart at Fort William, from whom, not from Charles or the old gentleman, he tried to raise the cash on May 14th. A friendly or just jury would have noted that if James planned a murder on the night of May 11th, and had no money, his very first move on May 12th would be to try to raise the money for the assassin's escape. No mortal would put off that step till the morning of the crime. Indeed, it is amazing that Allen, if he meant to do the deed, did not first try to obtain cash for his escape. The relations of Gleinir suspected at the time that Allen was not the assassin, that he fled merely to draw suspicion away from the real criminal, as he doesn't kidnap, and they even wished to advertise a pardon for him if he would come in and give evidence. These facts occur in a copious unpublished correspondence of the day between Gleinir's brothers and Kinsman. Mr. Stevenson had never heard of these letters. Thus, up to the day of the murder, Allen may not have contemplated it. He may have been induced unprepared to act as an accessory to the other man. The point where, according to the prosecution, the evidence pinched James of the Gleins was his attempt to raise money on May 14th. What could he want with so large a sum as 8L, so suddenly, as he had no bill to meet? Well, as a number of his friends were to be thrown out of their farms with their cattle next day, James might need money for their relief, and it seems certain that he had made no effort to raise money at the moment when he inevitably must have done so, if guilty that is, on May 12th, immediately after conserting, as was alleged, the plot with Allen Breck. Failing to get money from William Stewart at Fort William on May 14th, James did on May 15th procure a small sum from him or his wife, and did send what he could scrape together to Allen Breck at Colisnicone. This did not necessarily imply guilt on James's part. Allen, whether guilty or not, was in danger as a suspected man and a deserter. James was his father's friend, had been his guardian, and so in honor was bound to help him. But how did he know where Allen was to be found? If both were guilty they would have arranged, on May 11th, a place where Allen might lurk. If they did arrange that, both were guilty. But Donald Stewart, who went, as we have said, and saw Allen on the hillside on the night of the murder, added to his evidence that Allen had then told him to tell James of the Gleins where he may be found, that is, at Colisnicone. These tidings Donald gave to James on the morning of May 15th. James then said a peddler, Allen's cousin, back to William Stewart, got three L, added, in the evening of the sixteenth, more money of his own, and sent it to Allen. There was a slight discrepancy between the story of the maid, Kate McKinnis, and that of Donald Stewart as to what exactly passed between them concerning Allen on the night of the murder, and whether Allen did or did not give her a definite message to Donald. The prosecution insisted on this discrepancy, which really, as James's advocate told the jury, rather went to prove their want of collusion in the manufacture of testimony. Had their memories been absolutely coincident, we might suspect collusion, that they had been coached in their parts. But a discrepancy of absolutely no importance rather suggests independent and honest testimony. If this be so, Allen and James had arranged no tristing a place on May 11th, as they must have done if Allen was to murder Glenier, and James was to send him money for his escape. But there was a discrepancy of evidence as to the hour when the peddler sent by James to Fort William on May 15th arrived there. Was he dispatched after the hour when Donald Stewart swore that he gave Allen's message to James of the Glenier or earlier, with no knowledge on James's part of the message carried by Donald. We really cannot expect certainty of memory after five months, as to hours of the clock. Also, James did not prove that he sent a message to Allen at Colis Nicone, bidding him draw on William Stewart for money. Yet on Friday, May 15th, James did buy the peddler bid William Stewart to give Allen credit, and on Saturday, May 16th, Allen did make a pen from a bird's feather and ink with powder and water and write a letter for money on the strength of James's credit to William Stewart. This is certainly a difficulty for James, since he suggested John Breck McCall, a tenant of Appens at Colis Nicone, for the intermediary between Allen and William Stewart, and Allen actually did employ this man to carry his letter. But Allen knew this tenant well, as did James, and there was nobody else at that desolate spot, Colis Nicone, whom Allen could employ. So lonely is the country that a few years ago a gentleman of my acquaintance, climbing a rocky cliff, found the bones of a man nodded by foxes and eagles, a man who never had been missed or inquired after. Remains of pencils and leather shoestrings among the bones prove that the man had been a peddler, like James Stewart's messenger, who had fallen over the precipice in trying to cross from Colis Nicone to the road through Glencoe. But he never was missed, nor is the date of his death known to this day. The evidence of the lonely tenant at Colis Nicone, as to his interviews with Allen, is familiar to readers of Kidnapped. The tenant had heard of the murder before he saw Allen. Two poor women who came up from Glencoe told a story, saying that two men were seen going from the spot where Glenier was killed, and that Allen Breck was one of them. Thus early does the mysterious figure of The Other Man haunt the evidence. The tenant's testimony was not regarded as trustworthy by the Stewart Party. It tended to prove that Allen expected a change of clothes and money to be sent to him, and he also wrote the letter, with a wood pigeon's quill and powder and water, to William Stewart asking for money. But Allen might do all this, relying on his own message sent by Donald Stewart on the night of the murder to James of the Glens, and knowing, as he must have done, that William Stewart was James's agent in his large financial operations. On the whole then, the evidence, even where it pinches James most, is by no means conclusive of proof that on May 11th he had planned to the murder with Allen. If so, he must have begun to try to raise money before the very day of the murder. James and his son were arrested on May 16th and taken to Fort William. Scores of other persons were arrested, and the Campbells, to avenge Glenier, made the most minute examinations of hundreds of people. Meanwhile, Allen, having got 5L and his French clothes by the agency of his cousin, the Peddler, decamped from Calisna Cone in the night and marched across country to the house of an uncle in Rannock. Then he escaped to France, where he was seen in Paris by an informant of Sir Walter Scott's in the dawn of the French Revolution. A tall, thin, quiet old man wearing the cross of St. Louis and looking on at a revolutionary procession. The activities of the Campbells are narrated in their numerous unpublished letters. We learn from a nephew of Glenier that he had been several days ago forewarned by whom we cannot guess. Tradition tells, as I have said, that he feared danger only in Lockheald country, Lockaber, and thought himself safe in Appen. The warning then probably came from a Cameron in Lockaber, not from a Stuart in Appen. In coincidence with this is a dark, anonymous, blackmailing letter to Fassifer, as if he had urged the writer to do the deed. You will remember what you proposed on the night that Calisna was buried, betwixt the hill in Calisna. I cannot deny that I had breathing, a whisper, and not only that, but proposal of the same to myself to do. Therefore you must excuse me when it comes to the push for telling the thing that happened betwixt you and me that night. If you do not take this to heart you may let it go as you will. June 6, 1752. Fassifern, who had no hand in the murder, let it go, and probably handed the blackmailer's letter over to the Campbell's. Later, blank, blank of blank, the blackest villain in the country, offered to the government to accuse Fassifern of the murder. The writer of the anonymous letter to Fassifern is styled Blarmakvillidich, or Blarmakvillidok, in the correspondence. I think he was a Mr. Miller employed by Fassifern to agitate against Glenir. In the beginning of July, a man suspected of being Allen was arrested at Anand on the border by a sergeant of the Royal Walsh Fusiliers. He really seems to have changed clothes with Allen. At least he wore gay French clothes like Allen's, but he was not that hero. Young Balachulish at this time knew that Allen was already crossed the sea. Various guesses occur as to who the other man was. For example, a son of James of the Glen was suspected, so there was another man. The precognitions or private examinations of witnesses before the trial extended to more than 700 persons. It was a matter of complaint by the Stewart Party that James Drummond's name appeared in the list of witnesses. This is Mr. Stevens's James Moore, really MacGregor, the son of Rob Roy and father of Katrina. Later, Mrs. David Balfour of Shaw's mean kidnapped and Katrina. James Moore's character is reflected upon and I believe he cannot be called worse than he deserves, says one of the Campbells. He alleges, however, that in April before the murder, James of the Glen's visited James Moore, then a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, caressed him and had a private conversation with him. The abject James Moore averred that, in this conversation, James of the Glen's proposed that James Moore's brother, Robin Oake, should kill Glenier for money. James Moore was not examinated at the trial of James of the Glen's, perhaps because he had already escaped, thanks to Katrina and collusion, but his evidence appears to have reached the jury, almost all of them Campbell's, who sat in Inverary, the Duke of Argyle on the bench, and made no difficulty about finding James of the Glen's guilty. To be sure, James, if guilty, was guilty as an accessory to Allen, and that Allen was guilty was not proved. He was not even before the court. It was not proved that the bullets which slew Glenier fitted the bore of James's small gun, with which Allen was alleged to have perpetrated the murder, but it was proved that the lock of that gun had only one fault. It missed fire four times out of five, and when the gun did not misfire, it did not carry straight, missed a black cock sitting. That gun was not the gun used in the murder. The jury had the case for James of the Glen's most clearly and convincingly placed before them, in the speech of Mr. Brown for the accused. He made indeed the very point on which I have insisted, for example, that if James concerted a murder with Allen on May 11th, he would not begin to hunt for money from Allen's escape so late as May 14th, the day of the murder. Again, he proved that without any information from James, Allen would naturally send for money to William Stewart, James's usual source of supply. While at Colistinacone, there was no man to go as messenger except the tenant, John Breck McCall. A few women composed his family, and as John McCall had been the servant of James of the Glen's, he was well known already to Allen. In brief, there was literally no proof of concert, and had the case been heard in Edinburgh, not in the heart of Campbell Country, by a jury of Campbell's, a verdict of not guilty would have been given. Probably the jury would not have even fallen back upon not proven. But moved by clan hatred and political hatred, the jury on September 24th found a verdict against James of the Glen's, who, in a touching, brief speech, solemnly asserted his innocence before God and chiefly regretted that after ages should think me guilty of such a horrid and barbarous murder. He was newly hanged and left hanging on the little knoll above Seaferry, close to the Ballochulish Hotel. And the other man? Tradition averse that on the day of the execution he wished to give himself up to justice, though his kinsmen told him that he could not save James and would merely share his fate. But nevertheless he struggled so violently that his people mastered and bound him with ropes and laid him in a room still existing. Finally it is said that strange noises and knockings are still heard in that place, a mysterious survival of strong human passions attested in other cases, as on the supposed site of the murder of James the First of Scotland in Perth. Do I believe in this identification of the other man? I have marked every trace of him in the documents, published or unpublished, and I remain in doubt. But if Alan had an accessory to the crime who was seen at the place and accomplished who, for example, supplied the gun, perhaps fired the shot, while Alan fled to distract suspicion, that accessory was probably the person named by legend, though it was certainly under suspicion, so were scores of other people. The crime does not seem to me to have been the result of a conspiracy in Appen, but the act of one hot-headed man or of two hot-headed men. I hope I have kept the Celtic secret, and I defy anyone to discover the other man by aid of this narrative. That James would have been quite safe with an Edinburgh jury was approved by the almost contemporary case of the murder of the English sergeant Davies. He was shot on the hillside, and the evidence against the assassins was quite strong enough to convict them. But some of the Highland witnesses averred that the phantasm of the sergeant had appeared to them and given information against the criminals, and though there was testimony independent of the ghosts, his interference threw ridicule over the affair. Moreover, the Edinburgh jury was in sympathy with Mr. Lockhart, the Jacobites' advocate who defended the accused. Though undeniably guilty, they were acquitted. Much more would James of the Glen's have obtained a favorable verdict. He was practically murdered under forms of law, and what was thought of the Duke of Argyle's conduct on the bench is familiar to readers of kidnapped. I've never seen a copy of the pamphlet put forth after the hanging by the Stewart Party, and only know it through a reply in the Campbell M.S.S. The tragedy remains as fresh in the memories of the people of Appen and Lockhart as if it were an affair of yesterday. The reason is that the crime of cowardly assassination was very rare indeed among the Highlanders. Their traditions were favorable to driving craze of cattle and to clan raids and onfalls, but in the wildest regions the traveler was far more safe than on house low or bagshot heaths, and shooting from behind a wall was regarded as dastardly. End of Chapter 4 Section 5 of historical mysteries. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Historical Mysteries by Andrew Lang The Cardinals' Necklace Oh, Nature and Thackery, which of you imitated the other? One inevitably thinks of the old question thus travestide, when one reads, in the 5th edition, revised and augmented, of M.F.Bretano's La Faire du Collier. The familiar story of Jean-D.Balois of Cardinal Rohan and of the fatal diamond necklace. Jean-D.Balois might have sat, though she probably did not. For Becky Sharp, her early poverty, her pride in the blood of Balois recall Becky's youth, and her boasts about the blood of the Montmorences. Jean and her respectable friends, as Becky had the settlers, like Becky, she imprudently married a heavy, unscrupulous young officer. Her expedience for living on nothing a year were exactly those of Mrs. Rodin Crawley, her personal charms, her fluent tongue, her good nature, even were those of that accomplished lady. Finally, she has her Marquis of Stain in the Wealthy, luxurious Cardinal D. Rohan. She robs him to a tune beyond the dreams of Becky, and, incidentally, she drags to the dust the royal head of the fairest and most unhappy of Queens. Even now, there seems to be people who believe that Marie Antoinette was guilty, that she cajoled the Cardinal, and robbed him of the diamonds, fateful as the jewels of Areophile. That theory is annihilated by M. Funk Britano. But the story is so strangely complicated. The astuteness and the credulity of the Cardinal are so oddly contrasted, a momentary folly of the Queen is so astonishing and fatal. The general mismanagement of the court is so crazy that, had we lived in Paris at the moment, perhaps we could hardly have believed the Queen to be innocent. Even persons greatly prejudiced in her favour might well have been deceived. And the people loveth to think the worst, and is hardly to be moved from that opinion, as was said of the Scottish public, at the date of the Galerie conspiracy, an infidelity of Henri II of France to his wedded wife Catherine de Medici, and the misplaced affection of Louis XV for M. Dubéry, were the remote but real causes that helped to ruin the House of France. Without the amour of Henri II, there would have been no Jean de Valois, without the hope that Louis XV would stick at nothing to please M. Dubéry. The diamond necklace would never have been woven. Henri II loved about 1550, a lady named Nicole de Savigny, and by her had a son, Henri de Saint-Remy, whom he legitimated. Saint-Remy was the great, great, great grandfather of Jean de Valois, the flower of Minxes. Her father, a ruined man, dwelt in a corner of the family Chateau, a predacious poaching, athletic, broken scion of royalty, who drank and brawled with the peasants, and married his mistress, a servant girl. Jean was born at the Chateau of Fontété, near Barser, Aube, on April 22, 1756, and she and her brother and little sister starved in their moldering tower, kept alive by the charity of the neighbors and of the curry, who begged clothes for these descendants of kings, but their Scotchian was, and Jean never forgot the fact, Argent, three Fleurs-de-lis or Anapheze-Ajure. The noblice of the family was later scrutinized by the famous D. Hozier, and pronounced authentic, Jean, with bare feet and straws in her hair, is said to have herded the cows, a discontented indolent child, often beaten by her peasant mother. When her father had eaten up his last acre, he and the family tramped to Paris in 1760, as Jean was then, but four years old. I doubt if she ever drove the cattle home, as Im Func Britannot finds recorded in the M.S.S. of the Advocate Target, who defended Jean's victim, Cardinal Rohan. The Valois crew lived in a village near Paris. Jean's mother turned Jean's father out of doors, took a soldier in his place, and sent the child to beg daily in the streets. Pity a poor orphan of the blood of Valois, she piped alms, in God's name, for two orphans of the blood of Valois. When she brought home little, she was cruelly flogged, so she says, and occasionally she deviated into the truth. A kind lady, the Marquis de Boulaine Villiers, investigated her story, found it true, and took up the Valois orphans. The wicked mother went back to bar sir Ab, which Jean was to dazzle with her opulence after she got possession of the diamonds. By the age of 21, 1777, Jean was a pretty enchanting girl, with a heart full of greed and envy. Two years later, she and her sister fled from the convent where her protectress had placed them. A merry society convent it was. A Madame de Cermont now gave them shelter at bar sir Ab, and Jean married, very disreputably, her heavy admirer, Lamotte, calling himself Count, and to all appearance a stupid young officer of the gendarmerie. The pair lived as such people do, and again made prey of Madame de Boulaine Villiers in 1781 at Strasbourg. The lady was here, the guest of the sumptuous, vain, credulous, but honorable Cardinal Rohan, by this time a man of 50, and the fanatical adorer of Cagliostro, with his philosopher stone, his crystal gazers, his cirrhosis, his Egyptian mysteries, and his powers of healing diseases, and, creating diamonds out of nothing, Cagliostro doubtless lowered the Cardinal's moral and mental tone, but it does not appear that he had any connection with the great final swindle. In his supernormal gifts and graces, the Cardinal did steadfastly believe. Ten years earlier Rohan had blessed Marie Antoinette on her entry into France, and had been ambassador at the court of Maria Theresa, the Empress, a sportsman who once fired off 1,300 cartridges in a day. Can this be true? A splendid festive church man who bewitched Vienna, and even the Emperor and Count Kaunitz, by his lavish entertainments. Rohan made himself positively loathed for his corrupting luxury and his wicked wit by the austere Empress. She procured Rohan's recall, and so worked on her daughter, Marie Antoinette, the young Queen of France, that the Prelate, though Grand Almaner, was socially boycotted by the court, his letters of piteous appeal to the Queen were not even opened, and his ambitions to sway politics, like a Tenzin or a Flurry, were ruined. So here are Rohan, Kaik Leostro, and Jean, all broad acquainted. The Cardinal, and this is one of the oddest features in the affair, was to come to believe that Jean was the Queen's most intimate friend, and could and would make his fortune with her, while, at the same time, he was actually relieving her by little tips of from two to five Lewis. This he was doing, even after confiding in Jean. He handed to her the diamond necklace for the Queen, and, as he believed, had himself a solitary midnight interview with her Majesty, if Jean was so great with the Queen as Rohan supposed. How could Jean also be in need of small charities? Rohan was a man of the world. His incredible credulity seems a fact so impossible to accept that it was not accepted by public opinion. The Queen, people could not but argue, must have taken his enormous gifts, and then robbed, and denounced him, with the case before our eyes of Madame Humbert, who swindled scores of hard-headed financiers by the flimsiest fables. We can no longer deem the credulity of the Cardinal incredible, even though he displayed, on occasion, a sharpness almost as miraculous as his stupidity. Rohan conferred a few small favors on Jean. Her audacity was as great as that of Madame Humbert, and late in 1781, she established herself both at Paris and in Versailles. This one card in her hand was the blood of the Valois, and for long she could not play it to any purpose. Her claims were too old and musty. If a lady of the name of Stuart were to appear today, able to prove that she was of royal blood, as being descended from Francis, Earl of Bothwell, who used to kidnap James VI, was forfeited and died in exile about 1620. She could not reasonably expect to be peculiarly cherished and comforted by a royal family. Now Jean's claims were no better and no nearer in 1781 than those of our supposed toward adventures in 1904. But Jean was sanguine. Something must be done by hook or by crook for the blood of the Valois. She must fasten on her great relations, the royal family. By 1783, Jean was pawning her furniture and dining at the expense of her young admirers, or of her servants, for, somehow, they were attached to a mistress who did not pay their wages. She bought goods on her credit as a countess and sold them on the same day. She fainted in the crowd at Versailles, and Madame Elizabeth sent her a few Lewis, and had her tiny pension doubled. Jean fainted, again under the eyes of the Queen, who never noticed her. Her plan was to persuade small suitors that she could get them what they wanted by her back stairs influence with her royal cousin. She had a lover, Ray Tux, D. Villette, who was an expert forger, and by April 1784, relying on his skill, she began to hint to Rohan that she could win for him the Queen's forgiveness. Her Majesty had seen her faint and had been full of kindness. Nothing should be refused to the interesting daughter of the Valois. Letters of the Queen, too, Jean, forged by Villette on paper stamped with blue, Fleurs d'Alise, were laid before the eyes of the infatuated Prelate. Villette later confessed to his forgeries. All confessed, but as all recanted their confessions, this did not impress the public. The letters proved that the Queen was relenting as regarded Rohan. Cagliostro confirmed the fact. At a séance in Rohan's house, he introduced a niece of John's husband, a girl of 15, who played the part of Crystal Gaser, and saw, in the crystal, whatever Cagliostro told her to see. All was favorable to the wishes of Rohan, who was as easy of belief as any spiritualist. Being entirely dominated by the Neapolitan, Cagliostro, nonetheless, knew nothing of the great final coup, despite his clairvoyance. So far, in the summer of 1784, the great diamond fraud had not risen into Jean's consciousness. Her aim was merely to convince the cardinal that she could win for him the Queen's favor, and then to work upon his gratitude. It was in July 1784 that Jean's husband made the acquaintance of Marie Leguay, a pretty and good-humored but quite unfortunate young woman, the height of honesty and disilludeness, who might be met in the public gardens, chaperoned solely by a nice little boy. Jean D. Valois was not of a jealous temperament. Mademoiselle Leguay was the friend of her husband, the tawdry count. For Jean, that was enough, she invited the young lady to her house, and by her royal fantasy created her auron, gay, doliva, valois, and easy anagram. She presently assured the baron that the Queen desired her collaboration in a practical joke. Her majesty would pay six hundred libra for the freak. This is baron's own version, her innocence, she have eared, readily believe that Marie Antoinette desired her assistance. You are only asked to give, some evening, a note and a rose to a great lord. In an alley of the gardens of Versailles, my husband will bring you hither tomorrow evening. Jean later confessed that the baron really quite stupid enough to be quite satisfied that the whole affair was a jest. Judged by their portraits, doliva, who was to personate the Queen, in an interview with the Cardinal, was not at all like Marie Antoinette. Her short, round, buxom face bears no resemblance to the long and noble outlines of the features of the Queen. But both women were fair and of figures not dissimbular. On August 11, 1784, Jean dressed up doliva in the chemise or gall, the very simple white blouse which Marie Antoinette wears in the contemporary portrait by Madame Vigie Lebron, a portrait exhibited at the salon of 1783. The ladies, with Lamotte, then dined at the best restaurant in Versailles and went out into the park. The sky was heavy, without moon or starlight, and they walked into the somber mass of the grove of Venus, so styled from a statue of the goddess which was never actually placed there. Nothing could be darker than the thicket below the sullen sky. A shadow of a man appeared. «Vous voilà!» said the Count, and the shadow departed. It was Vallette, the forger of the Queen's letters, the lover and accomplice of Jean D. Valois. Then the gravel of a path crackled under the feet of three men. One approached, heavily cloaked. Doryva was left alone. A rose fell from her hand. She had a letter in her pocket which she forgot to give the cloaked man who knelt and kissed the skirt of her dress. She murmured something. The cloaked cardinal heard, or thought he heard, her say, «You may hope that the past is forgotten». Another shadow flitted past, whispering, «Quick, quick, come on, here are Madame and Madame d'Artois». They dispersed. Later the cardinal recognized the whispering shadow that fled by. In Vallette, the forger, how could he recognize a fugitive shade vaguely beheld in a dark wood? On a sultry and starless night, if he mistook the girl, Doliva, for the Queen, what is his recognition of the shadow worth? The conspirators had a jolly supper, and one big knot. A friend of Jean, not conscious of the plot, escorted the baron, Doliva back to her rooms in Paris. The trick, the transparent trick, was played, and Jean could extract from the cardinal what money she wanted in the name of the Queen that gave him a rose in the grove of Venus. Letters from the Queen were administered at intervals by Jean, and the prelate never dreamed of comparing them with the authentic handwriting of Marie Antoinette. We naturally ask ourselves, was Rohan in love with the daughter of the Valois? Does his passion account for his blindness? Most authors have believed what Jean later proclaimed, that she was the cardinal's mistress. This, the divine, steadily denied. There was no shadow of proof that they were even on familiar terms, except a number of erotic letters, which Jean showed to a friend, Bugnot, saying that they were from the cardinal, and then burned. The cardinal believed all things, in short, and verified nothing, in obedience to his dominating idea, the recovery of the Queen's good graces. Meanwhile, Jean drew on him for large sums, which the Queen, she said, needed for acts of charity. It was proved that Jean, instantly invested the money in her own name, bought a large house with another loan, and filled it with splendid furniture. She was as extravagant as she was greedy. Elene Apatens, Sue Profusa. The cardinal was in Alsace, at his bishopric, when in November, December 1784, Jean was brought acquainted with the jewelers, Beaumir and Besinge, who could not find a customer for their enormous and very hideous necklace of diamonds left on their hands by the death of Louis XV. The European courts were poor. Marie Antoinette had again and again refused to purchase a bobble like a comforter made of precious stones, or to accept it from the King. We have more need of a ship of war, she said, and would not buy, though the jeweler fell on his knees and threatened to drown himself. There were then no American millionaires, and the thickest and ugliest of necklaces was eating its head off, for the stones had been bought with borrowed money. In the jewelers, Jean found new victims. They, too, believed in her credit with the Queen. They, too, asked no questions, and held that she could find them a purchaser. Jean imposed on them thus. While the cardinal was still in Alsace, he arrived at Paris in January 1785. He learned, from Jean, that the Queen wished him to deal for her with the jewelers. She would pay the price 60,000 libra by quarterly installments. The cardinal could believe that the Queen, who, as he supposed, had given him a darkling interview, would entrust him with such a commission, for an article which she had notoriously refused. But there is a sane spot in every man's mind, and on examining the necklace, January 24, 1785, he said that it was in very poor taste. However, as the Queen wanted to wear it at a ceremony on February 2, he arranged the terms and became responsible for the money. His guarantee was a document produced by Jean, and signed Marie Antoinette de France, as Cagliostro pointed out to Rohan later. Too late, the Queen could not possibly use the signature, neither the prolet, nor the tradesman, saw the manifest absurdity. Rohan carried the necklace to Jean, who gave it to the alleged messenger of the Queen. Rohan only saw the silhouette of this man in a dusky room, through a glass door. But he later declared that in him he recognized the fleeting shade who whispered the warning to fly in the dark grove of Venus. It was Vellette, the forger. Naturally, people asked, if you could not tell the Queen from Mademoiselle D'Oliva when you kissed her robe in the grove, how could you recognize, through a damn glass door, the man of whom you had only caught a glimpse as a fleeting shadow? If you are so clever, why? It was the Queen whom you met in the wood. You cannot have been mistaken in her. These obvious arguments told against the Queen as well as against the Cardinal. The Queen did not wear the jewels at the feast for which she had wanted them. Strange to say, she never wore them at all, to the surprise of the vendors and of the Cardinal. The necklace was, in fact, hastily cut to pieces with a blunt heavy knife in Jean's house. Her husband crossed to England and sold many stones and bartered more for all sorts of trinkets to Grey of Nubond Street and Jeffries of Piccadilly. Vellette had already been arrested with his pockets full of diamonds, but the luck of the house of Valois and the astuteness of John procured his release. So the diamonds were, in part, dumped down in England. Many were capped by the Lamottes, and John paid some pressing debts in diamonds. The happy Lamottes, with six carriages, a set of horses, silver played of great value, and diamonds glittering on many portions of their raiment, now went off to astonish their old friends at Barsar Ab. The inventories of their positions, red like pages out of the Arabian Nights, all went merrily till a great ecclesiastical feast among her friends the aristocracy. On August 17, 1785, John learned that the Cardinal had been arrested at Versailles in full pontificals when about to celebrate the Mass. She rushed from table, fled to Versailles, and burned her papers. She would not fly to England. She hoped to brazen out the affair. The arrest of the Cardinal was caused thus on July 12, 1785. The jeweler, Bomur, went to Versailles with a letter of thanks to the Queen, dictated by Rohan. The date for the payment of the first installment had arrived. Nothing had been paid. A reduction in price had been suggested and accepted. Bomur gave the letter of thanks to the Queen, but the Comptroller General entered. And Bomur withdrew. Without waiting for a reply, the Queen presently read the letter of thanks, could not understand it, and sent for the jeweler, who had gone home. Marie Antoinette thought he was probably mad, certainly abhor, and burned his note before the eyes of Madam Campan. Tell the man, when you next see him, that I do not want diamonds, and shall never buy any more. Fatal Folly, had the Queen insisted on seeing Bomur, all would have been cleared up. And her innocence established. Bomur's note spoke of the recent arrangements of the jeweler's joy that the greatest of Queens possesses the handsomest of necklaces. And Marie Antoinette asked no questions. Jean, now August 3, did a great stroke. She told Besinge that the Queen's guarantee to the Cardinal was a forgery. She calculated that the Cardinal, to escape the scandal, would shield her, would sacrifice himself and pay the 6,000 Levera. But the jeweler's dared not carry the news to the Cardinal. They went to Madam Campan, who said that they had been gold. The Queen had never received the jewels. Still, they did not tell the Cardinal. Jean now sent Fellette, out of the way, to Geneva. And on August 4, Besinge asked the Cardinal, whether he was sure, that the man who was to carry the jewels to the Queen had been honest. A pleasant question. The Cardinal kept up his courage. All was well. He could not be mistaken. Jean, with cunning audacity, did not fly. She went to her splendid home at Bar-sur-Aub. Fellette was already out of reach. Dolova, with her latest lover, was packed off to Brussels. There was no proof against Jean. Her own flight would have been proof. The Cardinal could not denounce her. He had insulted the Queen by supposing that she gave him a lonely midnight trist. A matter of high treason. The Cardinal could not speak. He consulted Kegliastro. The guarantee is forged, said the sage. The Queen could not sign Marie-Antoinette de France. Throw yourself at the King's feet. And confess all. The wretched Rohan now compared the Queen's forged notes to him, with authentic letters of hers in the possession of his family. The forgery was conspicuous. But he did not follow the advice of Kegliastro. On August 12, the Queen extracted the whole fax, as far as known to them, from the jewelers. On August 15, the day of the Assumption, when the Cardinal was to celebrate, the King asked him, my cousin, what is this tale of a diamond necklace bought by you in the name of the Queen, the unhappy man. Unable to speak coherently, was allowed to write the story. In 15 lines, how could you believe, asked the Queen with angry eyes, that I, who have not spoken to you for eight years, entrusted you with this commission? How indeed could he believe it? He offered to pay for the jewels. The thing might still have been hushed up. The King is blamed. First for publicly arresting Rohan as he did. An enormous scandal. Next for handing over the case, for public trial, to the Parliament, the hereditary foes of the court. Forta de Saint Just, one of the bar, cried, What a triumph for liberal ideas! A Cardinal, a thief, the Queen implicated, Mud on the Crozier, and the Scepter. He had his fill of liberal ideas, for he was guillotined on June 14, 1794. Kings and Queens are human beings, they like a fair and open trial. Mary's Steward prayed for it in vain, from the estates of Scotland. And from Elizabeth, Charles I asked for public trial in vain, from the estates of Scotland. At the time of the unsolved puzzle of the Incident, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had the publicity they wanted, to their undoing. The Parliament was to acquit Rohan of the Theft of the Necklace, a charge which John tried to support by a subplot of romantic complexity. And that acquittal was just. But nothing was said of the fatal insult which he had dealt to the Queen, the Lat, who had forged the royal name, was merely exiled, left free to publish fatal columnaries abroad, though high treason, as times went, was about the measure of his crime. Gay Doleva, whose personation of the Queen also verged on treason, was merely acquitted with a recommendation not to do it again. Pretty, a young mother, and profoundly disillute, she was the darling of liberal and sensible hearts. John D. Velwa, indeed, was whipped and branded. But John, in public opinion, was the scapegoat of a cruel princess, and all the mud was thrown on the face of the guiltless Queen. The friends of Rohan were all the clergy, all the many nobles of his illustrious house, all the courtly foes of the Queen. They began by the basis, columnaries, the ruin that the people achieved. All the friends of liberal ideas, who soon, like Forta de Saint Just, had more of liberalism than they liked. These were the results which the King obtained by offering to the Cardinal his choice between the royal verdict and that of the public court of justice. Rohan said that, if the King would pronounce him innocent, he would prefer to abide by the royal decision. He was innocent of all but being a presumptuous fool. The King might, even now, have recognized the fact, mud would have been thrown, but not all the poached filth of the streets of Paris. On the other hand, had Lewis withheld the case from public trial, we might still be doubtful of the Queen's innocence. Napoleon acknowledged it. The Queen was innocent, and to make her innocence the more public. She wished the Parliament to be the judge. The result was that she was taken to be guilty. Napoleon thought that the King should have taken the case into his own hand. This might have been wisdom for the day, but not for securing the verdict of posterity. The pyramidal documents of the process, still in existence, demonstrate the guilt of the Lamats and their accomplices at every step, improved the stainless character of the Queen. Lamat could not be caught. He had fled to Edinburgh, where he lived with an aged Italian teacher of languages. This worthy man offered to sell him for 10,000 libra. And a pretty plot was arranged by the French ambassador to drug Lamat, put him on board a Collier at South Shields and carry him to France, but the old Italian lost heart. And, after getting 1,000 libra out of the French government in advance, deemed it more prudent to share the money with the Count. Perhaps the Count invented the whole stratagem. It was worthy of the husband and pupil of Jean de Valois. That poor lady's cause was lost when Vallette and Gaye Dolava were brought back across the frontier, confessed, and corroborated each other's stories. Yet she made a wonderfully good fight, changing her whole defense into another as plausible and futile. Before the very eyes of the court, and doing her best to ruin Rohan as a thief, and cagliostro as the forger of the Queen's guarantee, the bold Neapolitan was acquitted, but compelled to leave the country. An attempt, England, where the phlegmatic islanders trusted him no more than they trusted Madame Humbert. We expended our main capital of credulity on Titus Oates, and Bedelow, and the warming Pan Lai, our imaginative innocence being most accessible in the region of religion. The French are more open to the appeal of romance and to disillute honesty in the person of Miss Gaye Dolava. Two injured innocents as represented by Jean de Valois. That class of rogue suits a gay people, while we are well mated with such a seductive divine as Dr. Oates. End of Section 5