The Portland Gazette

AN UNHEARD OF ATROCITY.

Letters from Angouleme contain the following account of an horrible outrage committed near Confolens.--A young couple, who were on the point of being married, went together to invite their relations to the nuptials. The girl was mounted on her lover's horse, followed by him on foot. On their arrival at a village where the young man wanted to see some person, he left his distant bride to wait his return in the road. Immediately afterwards three ruffians arrived, who, after grossly insulting the girl, obliged her to alight from the horse, stripped her naked, committed outrages on her person, which decency will not permit us to relate, and threatened, to murder her; they then, killed the horse, cut open his belly, took out the entrails, and in their place put the unfortunate young woman, sewed up the animal's skin, and made off.

Some children who were passing by afterwards heard cries issuing from the bowels of the horse, and immediately ran in great fright to tell their parents that the devil was in a dead horse lying on the road. In the mean time the young man arrived and heard the groans of his expiring mistress. She was dragged out of the horrid situation where the villains had placed her, transported to the nearest barn, where every attention was paid to her. The police set directly about pursuing the horrid monsters who had committed an offence new in the annals of crime, and were fortunate enough to arrest them. They were recognized by the young woman, upon confrontation. The unfortunate victim could not survive the outrages which had been perpetrated upon her, and expired five days afterwards.

* *We insert the above (almost incredible) horror, on the authority of a respectable correspondent.--Ed. Lon. Morn. Chronicle.