The sub-prefect of Kuangsichou recently presented a strange report to the Viceroy of Yunnan. He had been summoned, he said, to a village in his district to hold an inquest on a man who had been stabbed to death. His retinue obtained a lodging for the night in the house of a woman who was sister to the man that killed the deceased. After eating their dinner they fell down stupefied, but remedies were applied, and they recovered. They said that the woman of the house had poisoned the water in which the rice was boiled. She was arrested, but managed to escape, and hanged herself in fear of the conseences of her act. The Viceroy thought the story very improbable, and nave orders for the truth of it to be investigated. Afterwards the woman's husband lodged complaint to the effect that the sub-prefect's attendants had driven his wife to commit suicide, and had kicked his little son to death. An'inquest, held by an independent authority, ited the facts that the woman, had died from hanging and that there were fetters on her person. The little boy had also been hanged; and there were bruises on both the bodies. The Viceroy remarks that the men will of course be tried in the ordinary way. But he considers that in any case the sub-prefect ought to have enquired immediately into the story of the poisoning and not to have let the woman be locked up on the unproved stateents of his attendants. It is therefore requested that he may be immediately cashiered.—Granted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.