A THRILLING STORY; AND YET A THRILLER.

Lake County Press, Issue 78, 29 November 1872, Page 3

A THRILLING STORY; AND YET A THRILLER.

The writer of ' Under the Verandah,' gives the following sensational story, the facts of which we can vouch for as being correct: A story with a thrill in it ha« been going the rouuds of the newspapers, how a woman's husband died somewhere about Inveroargill [Melbourne ?], and how he lift some property, and just as the widow got over her loss, and got into the pro pern , out comes the first wife of the dead man, and seizes all -of his possessions, leaving the second, who never knew anything about the first wife to become very hard up. Tlien some man pitied the first wife because she was youug, plump and good looking, atid he asked her to marry him, and she did. Then in time the second husband died, and just as the widow was going into grief skirts and Dolly Vardeus tor him, who should rap at the door one afternoon, all the way from Homo, but the second husband's first wile; then the double widow, who in law is no widow at all, with her five children, was in great distress, as anyone may believe, if th y will only try to imagine themselves similarly siuated. The sto»y, as I have s .id, fairly considered, has a thrill in it ; but I have a story with a thriller. It all happened to my own knowledge, and illustrates a proverb that " 1 ruth is stranger than fiction." A few years ago I was living in a suburb of the second city of Victoria, and two doors from me there dwelt, in a neat cottage, a man well to do in the world. He had made some mon<yon the Ballarat goldfields.' This man had left his home and his wife to seek his fortune in Victoria. If he succeeded he was to send for his wife ; if he did not, he was to work his way back to her again the best way he could. He did succeed. And here, at this part of my story, I have got to introduce a vidian. Like a fool, the man, instead of buying a bank draft to send home' to his wife to pay her passage out, entrusted it to a mate of his, who had worked with him in the lucky claim at Ballarat. This mate (I knew the scoundrel well) was going home to England with a little pile of his own. Well, he took from the husband the 100 sovereigns to give to the tEen, wnaT does snVtffink 1 \Tils"man SSff? Ihe answer will be-kept the money to be sure ! Ah he did that; he did a gieat deal worse. When he saw the wife, he saw a woman young and fair to look, and at that moment the Devil entered him Instead of giving the woman good tidings of her husband, instead of gladdening her heart by dangling the purse of golden soyengns before her eyes and then putting it into the palms of both her hands, the dirty scoundrel told the woman her husband was dead. What did he care about her fainting, or her agony and her after misery ! Now I come to the romance in my story. When the woman's grief became assuaged and her tears dried, and a little time showed her destitute condition, this fellow—this mate of her living husband, who he said was dead, proposed to marry the poor woman, and she accepted him. The next act of dire rascality the fellow did was to write out to his mate and say when he reached home he found that his wife was dead—although, mind you, he never remitted back tie hundred sovereigns. Three months passed over, and that scoundrel with his wife lived in that hugh suburb of London, known as Greenwich. One day he was brought home on a stretcher, a I dray having knocked him down, the

wheel of which smashed his ankle. He was stripped, put to bed, and the doctor sent for. • I piss all this over, and say that in feeling her new hualmnd'u po«kets to put away anything he hid in them, she disc. Vi-red a 1 tter addressed 10 him fro n his f rmer male, requesting that the hundred sovereigns held by him should b remitted back. Then in an instant, almost in the twinkling of an eye, and with a surprise that will come to all when the last trump of the angel shall have been sounded, she discovered the man's yiliiany, and her own u'ter 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 from myself, who now relate 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 honestlv c urted a respectable woma.i, and as hj nestlv took her to church, and put on the weddin°--™8 ln £ he presence of the cleri-yman, 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 I, a long married 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. W..s the man to live with his wife, or should his second claim him ? It resolved itsdf into a question of feeling. The man preferred his first wife to his second. The second wiiedecland she was about to become the mother of a child by her husbaml—and sorrow on the daj .'—the first wife was also to become a mother by the scoundrel father of it in Kngland. What could Ido in the m.,tter 1 Nothing, but simply recommended the parties to seek advice of the stipendiary magistrate. They did this, and it w * a ,*°, ttr >*»ged 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 pirted in bitter tears, but with tender feelings to each other. She who went her wuy soon after gave birth to a still-born child, the mother dying three hours after ; and so the child and the dead mother were burh d together in a bu>h grave. This romance happened in the village of Ashhy, within half a mile of Geelong, in Victoria, and there are men now living in this city of Auckland who recollect the circumstances equally well with myself. So I think there is not nearly the thrid in the lnvercargill widow's tr.uble there was in that p >or woman's who wended lu-r way into a bu*h settlement to die and be buried with the hrst fruit of her unhappy marriage. You see I have told this story in something like about a column of reading, which will cost the subscriber to tin's weekly publication, allowing.tor the other mutter he gets with it, the fractional part of half a ferthing. Had Wi kie Collins or Miss BradJoii got hold of ir, neither c-.uld have given it to the world in less than three volum s demy octavo, price one guinea and a half.