WANDERER RETURNS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14375, 21 May 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

WANDERER RETURNS.

LOST SON CLAIMS HALF 'FATHER'S ESTATE. PATHETIC SCENE OVER RELICS OF DEAD PARENT. For twenty years there was no trace of the wanderer. Now ho has cqme back to claim a huge fortune. His romantic story is told in the reports of a will dispute now occupying the attention of the American courts. The case has already occupied 111 days .in hearing, and if it goes on much .longer it will seriously menace the records of the Tichborne trial. In this case there is no title at stake, but a trilling matter of a:million dollars ! There is a claimant for half this fortune, but in the probate courts, where they are fighting over this pile, the executors of the will say claimant is not a son of .testator, but a bogus person and a gaolbird. Daniol Russell, of Melrose, was a prominent citizen of Middlesex County, East Cambridge, U.S.A., and accumulated a large fortune. He had two sons, William C. Russell and Daniel Blake Russell. William was a quiet, stay-at-home sort of young fellow, and Daniel had the spirit of adventure in his veins. Russell pere did not get on very well with Daniel, who was rather his mother's favourite, and so it came about that on June 5, 1885, Daniel left home. His mother died in 1899, and his father on January 23, 1907, and from the day of his leaving until their respective deaths they never saw anything of him again.' When making his will the father inserted a provision stating that "if my absent son Daniel Blake Russell, should return and prove his identity any time within 20 years of my decease, William should share with Daniel equally and justly whatever of my estate he may hold at the time Daniel returns." Early in the spring of last year/ a sturdy ranchman visited a Boston hotel and signed his name as " Daniel Blake Russell, of Medora, North Dakota," He had a lawyer with him, and the next day called at Melrose, the home of the late Daniel Russell. He saw a niece of the deceased dollar-millionaire, but she refused to recognise the caller as her long-lost cousin, Daniel Blake Russell, nor would she let him see William C. Russell. When the BOOBS WERE CLOSED tTON HIM in tiiie. way one ia.inMuua.ii. nuu a walls round ineuose, aiiu was recognised as jjainel iiiaKe ltusseu by old scnooiienows and others. In the story toid at court it was narrated how, wnen Daniel leit home, his mother placed a lighted candle in the window as a signal lor her wandering boy every night as long as she lived. Claimant told the court that a year after he went away he returned home one night-and peeped at the house from the pine./, but was too proud to enter, and so went away. Once he went to Boston with a circus, but remained on the ground all the while, for fear he should be recognised. When he first left home he fell in with a tramp named Bob" Twi6t, and they led a nomadic existence for months. After working on ranches, farms, mills, logging camps, and circuses, he married, and settled down as ranch owner in North Dakota. His attorney says he has known him for ten years, and there can be no question about his identity. Claimant says that if he could only talk to 1 William C. Russell, who is hedged about by a bodyguard of attorneys and an army of detectives, he could convince him of their fraternity. During the trial claimant was handed a lock of grey hair, which, he said, had been received by him from some unknown person after his mother's death. When his hand grasped the pathetic relic heburst into tears, and the lawyers and spectators cried with him. It so affected the judge that he ordered a 15 : minutes' adjournment. When claimant presented his case in court the other side declared that ho was not Daniel Blake Russell, but a French Canadian from Hogansburg, in Bombay, St. Laurance County, New York, by" the name of Rusau— corruption of Rousseau. Each day claimant holds a reception in the courthouse, and spend" a good deal of time returning the handshakes given him for luck by crowds of spectators.