By sparkling stream and meadow green and all Nature seems so gay;

And quite content the farmer went a-whistling to his team,

The swallow winged her airy flight beyond the limpid stream.

Oh what starling news is this? A murder has been done,

The thought alone a shadow brings, like a cloud shuts out the sun;

Then swift indeed like lightning speed through town and country wide,

From door to door among rich and poor, on wings of wind do ride.

About three miles down from Charlottetown the Sherwood cottage lies,

And there an old man lived alone scarce seen by mortal eyes;

Some folks had said that wealth he made by grubbing day by day,

What crimes untold are caused for gold that leads the soul astray.

Unto this end my feeble pen I fear cannot portray, . The sickening sight which was brought to light on the twenty-fifth ) of May; No tongue could tell, no eye beheld nor heard the dying groan 3 But God on high, it’s there did lie a mangled corpse alone.

The brains protruding from the skull caused the stoutest hearts to quail,

What fiend in life in human shape this old man did assail?

The victim’s blood could do no good if plunder brought him there,

Why not he take all earthly things his poor old life to spare?

i The bedclothes round the victim found, the murderer laid with care, Then for to hide his bloody crime he straightway did prepare; He changed his name to shun the blame, if Gillis be the man, Let justice speak, the proof is weak, let none but guilty hang.

But now at last the sentence passed, the time is drawing nigh, On the eleventh day of March poor Gillis is to die;

By judge and iury he’s been tried, by learned lawyers bold, And if he die may God on high have mercy on his soul.

But now I believe there’s a reprieve brings judgment in the strife To change the doom of Gillis to imprisonment for life;

To the gallows high he bids goodbye, to Charlottetown farewell, ln Dorchester iail poor Gillis lies while life remains to dwell.

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