By W. W. Ravenhill, £sq. 



49 



out, " Ah ! rogues, will you kill me? He said he asked his brother 

 to spare him, but he replied, " Peace, peace, you are a fool/' and 

 strangled him. (Oh ! poor Mr. Harrison !) He further con- 

 fessed that his brother took a bag of money out of the dead man's 

 pocket, and threw it to their mother, and that afterwards he and 

 his brother carried the body into a garden near, and having con- 

 sulted how to dispose of it, they determined to throw it into the 

 great sink by Wallington's Mill. He was next sent by them to 

 watch the court-yard of the house, whilst his confederates took the 

 body to the sink and threw it in ; and then they parted, for he went 

 to the court-gate and there met John Pearse and the other man, 

 and laid down in the hen-roost as already narrated. Thither he 

 carried his master's hat, bands and comb, and gave them some cuts 

 with his knife. When he went out at twelve o'clock he took them 

 with him and threw them down at the spot where they were found, 

 and then went on to Charringworth. 



It is scarcely possible to conceive a more cruel cold blooded murder, 

 than this startling confession disclosed, from the onset, when 

 Richard Perry rushed upon the unhappy old man as he came through 

 the darkness, till the body (it is to be hoped life was really extinct) 

 was cast into Wallington's pool. 



"There, get some water, 

 And wash this filthy witness from yonr hand." 



Macbeth, II, Sc. 2. 



It happened that the same magistrate who had hitherto measured 

 John Perry's rascality was at hand to act. The mother and brother 

 were at once arrested by his order. He also directed that same day 

 a search for Mr. Harrison's body. They hunted fields, hedgerows, 

 and hay-stacks, some of the pools and furse brakes, but all in vain, 

 no further trace of Mr. Harrison could at that time be found. There 

 were not such good appliances for dragging water then as now. 



On the following day (Saturday, Aug. 25th) all three prisoners were 

 brought before the justice already mentioned. On being charged 

 with Mr. Harrison's murder, Joan and Richard Perry stoutly denied 

 it; but John affirmed it to their faces, and added they were constantly 



VOL. XXII. — NO. LXIV. E 



