The Rev. Clifford Rickard, the chaplain of the convict- prison
in Dartmoor, who last Sunday had a desperate conflict with a burglar whom he found in his drawing-room about half an hour before midnight, has given an account of the struggle to the Western Daily Mercury. The struggle resulted in his getting two of his fingers cut through to the bone, and in his shooting the burglar in the arm, which had to be amputated, in order, we suppose, to prevent lock-jaw. Mr. Rickard's conduct was so forbearing, and he was so anxious not to injure the robber, that he very nearly lost his own life to prevent endangering the other's. This is his account of his proceeding :—" I asked him what he was doing, took him by the collar, so, and walked him into the study. He followed like a lamb. We sat upon the table, and again I asked him what he wanted. He said, 'Well, gav'nor, I only wanted some food, and a bit to go on with.' I replied, 'If you had come in the daylight and asked me for food, it would certainly never have been denied you : and I expect I should have given you something to go on with. Bat this isn't the way to ask for it, you know.' He asked me not to give him up, and I rejoined, I don't know about that ; I am afraid I shall have to give you up. This sort of thing won't do." At this the man got excited, and said, "I won't be took ! I won't be took ! " and it ended in his attacking the clergyman twice with the knife, so that he had to fire in self-defence ; and then, thinking that the wounded man would die, in his trying to tarn the man's thoughts to repentance. It seems to us a very maudlin kind of Christianity to find fault, as some of our contemporaries do, with a clergyman for doing what any manly layman would have done, and rightly done, in such an emergency.
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