7 he Leather Plater. 285 



hunting. "Well, I should say it was the last that the Lord built, 

 and the first he forsook." 



The words Holliwell Gibbet also gave an awful significance to 

 the place, and told a fearful tale of about as horrid and cold-blooded 

 a deed as was ever perpetrated. The cross-tree of the gibbet had 

 been down for some years, but the old post still remained. The 

 lone cottage by the edge of the wood where the dreadful murder was 

 committed had long since tumbled to decay; but there were old men 

 still alive in the village who well remembered that Sunday afternoon 

 when the young sailor, who had been absent from his home for 

 years, made his appearance once again at Holliwell, and was seen 

 to enter his poor old father's cottage. He had always been a wild 

 reckless youth from his earliest boyhood, and from the day he ran 

 away to sea, a beardless boy, he had never been heard of till he 

 again made his appearance at Holliwell, a wea then-beaten, black- 

 whiskered man. Yet, with all his faults, the old father loved that 

 boy dearly, and wild as he had been wild as he even still might be 

 the old man's morning and evening prayer was, that his reprobate 

 son would come back that he might see him once more, and bless 

 him before he died ; and the son did come back, and the old father 

 saw him, and for the last time. The old man owned a little bit of 

 land on the common, kept a cow or two, a few sheep and geese, 

 and even in this wild spot, by a life of hard work and privation, 

 had managed to scrape together a few pounds. These he kept con- 

 cealed in an old box under his bed ; and it was this paltry sum that 

 doubtless cost the old man his life. Towards nightfall the son left the 

 hovel, and next morning the old man was not seen hobbling about 

 the common on his stick, as was his usual wont. A labourer, who 

 by chance passed the cottage soon after daybreak next morning, 

 was horrified at seeing a pool of stagnant blood which had welled 

 its way under the door, and settled in a deep red clot on the stone 

 before it. He broke open the door at once, and there lay the 

 old man stiff and dead on the floor, the back of his head broken in 

 with a hatchet, and his throat cut from ear to ear. The box was 

 open, but no money in it. It is rarely that a murderer does not 



