An obliging correspondent tells us that he remembers riding with his father, in 1819, under a gibbet near Evesham, and the creaking of the irons as they were swayed by the wind. Chapter XI. Towards the year 1808 a man named Thomas Otter, _alias_ “Tom Temporal,” was hung at Lincoln for the murder of a woman with whom he cohabited there. It appears that she had followed him when returning into Nottinghamshire where his wife lived. At the junction of the two counties he turned on her, like a wild beast, and slew her--in a lane near Saxilby, still called “Gibbet Lane”--and flung the body into a drain dividing the two counties. Not exactly knowing which way to go at the moment,[89] the bewildered miscreant fled back as quickly as he could to Lincoln, was captured, and nearly proved an _alibi_ at the trial. But he was convicted and executed, and hung in chains on the fatal spot. This custom had then, fortunately, fallen somewhat into disuse; but even desuetude had its drawbacks, for crowds came to see the spectacle,--just as all Sheffield and Rotherham flocked to the gibbet of that famous highwayman, Spence Broughton, on Attercliffe Common in 1792, and a stall with that curious cloying refreshment--gingerbread--was set up, after the English rural fashion. Subsequently some inquiring tomtits were attracted, and made their nest, and hatched seven young ones, in the upper part of the iron frame where the head was fixed; and a local poet, in the fulness of his heart, produced the following riddle:-- “10 tongues in one head, 9 living and one dead, I flew forth to fetch some bread, To feed the living in the dead.” (Answer) “The tomtit that built in Tommy Otter’s head.” Years after, our informant,[90] riding in Gibbet Lane, came to the gibbet and saw bones and rags of clothing lying upon the ground, and the skull remaining in the iron headpiece. Parts of these irons are now preserved at Doddington Hall, near Lincoln. Another courteous correspondent[91] informs us that nearly seventy years ago, in Malta, on the occasion of a public festival, the body of one of two brothers, between whom a feud had long existed, was found murdered. Circumstantial evidence pointed so strongly to the survivor as the assassin that he was tried, condemned, and executed. In accordance with the Code Rohan, the right hand was separated from the body, and gibbeted in an iron cage. Some years had passed by when a man dying in the Civil Hospital confessed himself to be the murderer; he earnestly begged that something might be done to remove the stain from the memory of the blameless brother, and presently passed away. The gibbeted hand was now lowered and followed to a grave by an impulsive multitude in sobs and tears, uttering prayers and entreaties for the repose of the soul of the innocent victim, and trusting that the ordeal of martyrdom through which he had passed in this world might prove to him a crown of glory in the next.