216 The Dead Drummer', a Legend of Salisbury Plain. 



some struggles on the part of the unfortunate youth, he effected 

 by cutting his throat with a clasp-knife. He then took from his 

 pockets about six guineas in gold, money entrusted to him by the 

 sergeant his father; and leaving the body by the way-side, made 

 the best of his way to London, where he got work for some time 

 upon the craft on the Thames at Tower wharf. From that time 

 he had been in various employments as a seaman, in France, the 

 West Indies, and in Russia. He was last on board the Sampson 

 man of war, lying off Plymouth, whence he and his companion 

 John Shepherd (a native of the Soke in Winchester) were lately 

 discharged. The unhappy man further declared that with the ex- 

 ception of this murder, he had at no time done any injury to 

 society ; — that until the moment of committing it, he had not the 

 least idea thereof; — and that he had no provocation from the de- 

 ceased, excepting that he gave him ill language. But from that 

 fatal hour, he had, he said, been a stranger to all enjoyment of life 

 or peace of mind, the recollection thereof perpetually haunting his 

 imagination, and at times rendering his life a burden almost insup- 

 portable:— that in travelling with Shepherd on Thursday the 15th 

 inst. upon the road to Salisbury, they were overtaken near Wood- 

 yates Inn by a thunder storm, in which he saw several strange and 

 dismal spectres; particularly one in the appearance of a female, 

 towards which he walked up, when it instantly sank into the earth 

 and a large stone rose up in its place ; — that the stones rolled upon 

 the ground before him, and often came dashing against his feet." 



Such were the forms in which the terrors of a guilty conscience 

 arrayed themselves. His comrade John Shepherd saw not the 

 spectres, but he corroborated the story so far as related to the ex- 

 ternal deportment of the unhappy man, who, he said, was often 

 running about like one distracted, and anon falling on his knees 

 and imploring mercy. When more composed, he questioned him 

 as to the reason of his extraordinary conduct, when Matcham at 

 once acknowledged himself a murderer, and begged Shepherd to 

 deliver him into the hands of justice at the next place they might 

 reach, for life was hateful, and his sleepless nights crowded with 

 visions of misery and woe. 



