over the summit of the hill. The new road,
cut in 1826, winds lower down, and on the lower road the stone stands to
commemorate the crime. It was moved by the Ordnance Survey from the
higher ground, heedless of the warning engraved on it. On one side runs
the inscription:--

ERECTED

In Detestation of a barbarous Murder
Committed here on an unknown Sailor,
On Sep^r. 24^th, 1786,
By Edw^d. Lonegan, Michael Casey, and Ja^s. Marshall,
Who were all taken the same day,
And hung in Chains near this place.

The back of the stone informs us that it was erected by order and at the
cost of James Stillwell, of Cosford, 1786, and that he lays a curse on
"the man who injureth or removeth this stone." However, that had no
effect on the Ordnance Surveyors.

The gibbet stood for years. Gilbert White writes to Thomas Barker from
Selborne on New Year's Day, 1791:--

The thunder storm on Dec. 23 in the morning before day was very
aweful: but, I thank God, it did not do us the least harm. Two
millers, in a wind-mill on the Sussex downs near Good-wood, were
struck dead by lightning that morning; and part of the gibbet on
Hind-head, on which two murderers were suspended, was beaten down.

Local art has depicted the scene; four original oil-paintings grace the
walls of the Huts Hotel. Than the drawing of the stage-coach in full
gallop up to the gibbet in the dead of night, nothing could be well more
frightful.

Louis Jennings's description, in _Field Paths and Green Lanes_, of the
Portsmouth road as he saw it in 1876, is worth reading at Hindhead on a
summer day:--

It is with surprise that in this lonely waste one sees, between the
Devil's Punch Bowl and the top of the hill, a fine, broad, and
well-kept road; nor is that surprise diminished when you come upon
it, and find that it is as hard and smooth as any road in a private
park can possibly be. There are very few marks of wheels to be found
upon it, but abundant traces of sheep. This is the main Portsmouth
road, and to any one who knows what the roads are in country
places, and even in large towns, throughout the United States, this
splendid thoroughfare must seem one of the greatest curiosities in
England; for the traffic of London Bridge might be driven along it,
and even in this steep and wild country it is kept in the most
perfec