A curious letter to Wainwright from Stokes, formerly Wain- wright's
foreman, and the chief agent in discovering the murder and in causing the apprehension of the prisoner, was published in Monday's papers. On its conventional moral exhortations to Wainwright we have made some remarks elsewhere ; but the chief drift' of the letter, so far as regards its narrative part, is Stokes's assertion that he was prompted to open the ghastly parcel by a supernatural voice. "The very instant your back was turned, I seemed to hear a supernatural voice say to me three times, as distinctly as though it were a human voice somewhere near me,
' Open that parcel! open that parcel! Look in that parcel !' I hesitated what 1 should do. I seemed to hear the voice again, and then felt forced on by an irresistible impulse to open it." He describes what he found, and says he was puzzling what to say to Wainwright on his return, when he was possessed by a power which made him immediately close it again, and he then seemed to hear the supernatural voice saying, "Murder ; it is a murder. Will you conceal a murder?" There is unconscious truthfulness in this account. At first, the 'supernatural voice' does not suggest anything but what the instinct of curiosity would also have suggested ; nor does it suggest anything afterwards but what the common-sense of the man would have suggested also. Such voices as these need hardly be accounted supernatural. Nature would account for them well enough.
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