A Thrilling Story.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 159, 26 November 1872, Page 7

A Thrilling Story.

The witer of " Under the Verandah" in an Aucklam paper relate,?, the following story, the facts of which are vouched for as being correct :-

A few yars ago I was living in a suburb of the secom city of Victoria, and two doors from me thre dwelt, in a neat cottage, a man well-to-do n the world. He had made some money on t'e Ballarat gold-fields. This man had left hit home and his wife to seek his fortune in \ctoria. If he succeeded he was to send for lis wife ; if he did not he was to work his wayback to her again the best May he could, hj did succeed. And here, at this part of m story, I have to introduce a villain. Like a fool, the man, instead of buying a bankbraft to send home to his wife to pay her passge out, entrusted it to a mate of his, who hadvorked with him in the lucky claim at Ballart. This mate (I knew the scoundrel well) ias going home to England with a little pila>f his own. Well, betook from the husbam the 100 sovereigns to give to the wife when e readied Liverpool. Now then, what does he think this man did / The answer will I>—kept the money, to be sure ! Ah, he didthat ; but he did a great deal worse. AVhcrhe saw the wife, he saw a woman young and ur to look upon, and at that moment the Del entered him. Instead of giving the womanhood tidings of her husband, instead of dangng the purse of golden sovereigns before beeyes and then putting it into the palms of b«li her hands, the dirty scoundrel told the wcian her husband was dead. What did he cfc about her fainting, or her agony and her Her misery ! Now I come to the romance a m y story. When the woman's grief beca% assuaged, and her tears dried, and a little me showed her destitute condition, this felly—this mate of her living husband, who he id was dead—proposed to marry the poor Lilian, and she accepted him. The next ac of dire rascality the fellow did was to wrn o ut to his mate and say that when he reacid home he found that his wife was dead—ailnugh, mind you, he never remitted back he hundred sovereigns. Three months pnsed wcr, and that scoundrel with his wife wd ' n that hive suburb of London, known 5 Greenwich. One day be was brought bom on a itretcher, a dray having knocked bimlown, the wheel of which smashed bis ankle. He was stripped, [put to bed, and the doct< sent for. I pass all tb.is over, and say tliafn feeling her new husband's pockets to pufcWay anything' he had in them, she discoverta letter addressed to him from his former me, requesting that, the hundred sovereigns M by him should be remitted back. Then iin instant, almost j in the twinkling of an ey and with a surprise like that which willome to all when i

the last trump of the angel shall he sounded, she discovered the man's villainy, and her own utter misery. Passing over an interval of time, I now bring the woman to Victoria to seek out her first husband, having fled from the second. She found him residing within two doors of myself, who now relates this over-true story. But she found him married to a second wife. Believing the false tale of his mate respecting his first wife's death, he had honestly courted a respectable woman, and as honestly took her to church, and put on the wedding-ring in the presence of the clergyman, the bridesmaid, and the " best man." When the woman knocked at her husband's door it was opened by his second wife, and when all came to be known between the two, how shall I describe the miserable state of both • for 1 a lon<*-niar-ried man, well-known in the suburbs, was sent for to try and find a solution to the difficulty. Here were the first man and wife —the man wed to another woman—the wife wed to another man in England. No guilt or fraud on either side. Was the man to live with the first wife, or should his second claim him 1 It resolved itself into a question of feeling. The man preferred his first wife to his second. The second wife declared she was about to become the mother of a child by her husband, and—sorrow on the day !—the first wife was also to become a mother by the scoundrel father in England. What could Ido in the matter ? Nothing, but simply reconnhended the parties ! to seek advice of the stipendiary magistrate. ! They did this, and it was so arranged that the man should take home his first wife ; that he should give half of all he had to the second, who, with broken heart, agreed to go her way. The two women parted in bitter tears, but with tender feelings to each other. She wdio went her way soon after gave birth to a still-born child, the mother dying three hours after; and so the lifeless-born child and the dead mother were buried together in a bush grave. This romance happened in the village of Ashby, within half a mile of Geelong, in ! Victoria, and there are men now living in j this city of Auckland who recollect the cirI cunistances equally well with myself.