Crime & punishment > Whinny Park murder

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on the stretchers : it appeared therefore that Millie had
been sitting on the loom—that he had been first stunned
by a blow on the back of the head, and on falling had
been killed outright by two blows with the claws of a ham¬
mer on the temples. The murderer had attempted first
to bury the body in the place where the deed had been
committed; and a pit (as has been noticed before) dug
for that purpose, but filled up again, was found here un¬
der an unoccupied loom-stance; the shallownes of the
earth (for the place, as we have said, stands on a rock) had
however defeated his intentions; and he had then select¬
ed the footpath to the well, as being less liable to suspi¬
cion, after being dug up and again trampled on, than
any of the proper garden ground: this was covered in
great part with a crop of growing barley, and could not
of course have been disturbed with the spade without
causing immediate observation. It came out afterwards
that some of Mr Millie’s friends, who had called at the
house about a week or ten days after his first disappear¬
ance, found the door of the shop locked : and that those
who called a little before the discovery of the murder
(for one or other continued to look in on the place) found
it not only open, but the key gone, and the key-hole filled
with cobwebs. It is conjectured, therefore, that the bo¬
dy had lain for the first week in the pit found in the work¬
shop, and then, in the terror of discovery from the smell,
been taken to the grave dug in the pathway. From a sheet
having been found under the body when it was first disco¬
vered, it is supposed that he had wrapped it in this enve¬
lope, and finding it too heavy to be carried, had dragged
it along on the ground—from the workshop to the pit—a
distance of perhaps about sixty yards.
We have given these circumstances without interrup¬
tion : as necessary to give a complete idea of the ap¬
pearances presented on the first inspection of the place :
but the Sheriff had in the meantime taken measures
for apprehending the supposed murderer. On his ap¬
pearance being described by the neighbours, a gentle¬
man accompanying the Sheriff, recollected that morn¬
ing meeting on the Edinburgh road with a person of a
shambling awkward gait, like Henderson’s, who was