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the horse appearing to have been driven very hard, remarked to them, “they had driven fast but no answer was returned. On the following morning two labourers, Hetherington and William Hunt, at work in Gill’s-Hill-Lane, saw two men sauntering along the lane, and observed them stoop down, as if searching for something, in the hedge; When accosted by Wm.Hunt, one of the men said he had been capsized out of his gig there the evening before. After one of them had taken up something from the hedge, they both went towards Gill’s Hill, where there is a cottage, at that time inhabited by a Mr Probert, the lane being unfrequented, except by persons going to or from the cottage. On the same morning, one of the labourers found a pistol and a penknife by the road-side; the former of which was covered wtih blood and bits of hair,and the inside contained some portions of what a surgeon declared to be human brains. Some of these mysterious circumstances having been communicated, on the following day, to Messrs Clutterbuck and Mason, Magistrates at Watford, Hertford, a diligent enquiry was immediately set on foot; and some suspicions falling on the occupant of
