A MAD LOVER; OR, DEAD MAN'S CLIFF.

Otago Witness, Issue 1905, 25 May 1888, Page 31

A MAD LOVER; OR, DEAD MAN'S CLIFF.

Carl Deering and Coralie Black were | cousins and had been playmates from childhood. A word of love had never passed between them, and yet when Carl returned home from a Continental trip and found that she was betrothed to another he did not at all relish the news. When he found out that the happy man was Captain Hazel Lansdowne he tried to break the match off. There were many stories in vogue about the Captain's life. He had killed a fellow soldier once, as he said in self-defence, but it was generally suspected to have been a real coldblooded murder. The Captain knew that Carl had apprised his cousin of his crime, and for tnat reason he hated the young man, and lost no opportunity in betraying his animosity. Carl was so attentive to Coralie that several times it looked as if there would be an. open fight between him and the Captain. All the country round were invited to a picnic down by the seashore one day, and there, too, came the Captain and Coralie. Cousin Carl was there, too, and insisted in dancing and promenading and swinging Coralie and showing the beauties of the place and superseding Lansdowne generally in a free-and-easy, off-handed sort of a way that made Coralie laugh to herself and made the Captain turn livid. Once only that day he danced with her, and Carl came and bore her off for a waltz, against his express desire that she should never waltz with anybody but himself. "Nonsense, Hazel?" laughed Coralie. " How foolish you are 1 It is no harm to waltz with Cousin Carl." And, kissing her hand to him, she went floating away, encircled by Carl Deering's arm. Oh, had she seen the look in Captain Lansdowne's eyes at that moment, the livid whiteness of his face, the dreadful fire in his eyes 1 But she saw it not; and, without a word, he turned and walked rapidly away. The day passed, and he returned not. The hour for leaving was at hand, still he was absent. " Where is Captain Lansdowne ? " was the cry, but no one could answer. Coralie grew alarmed, and started off by herself in search of him. Standing on the top of a lofty cliff, looking with folded arms into the deep, rocky gulf below, she found him at last. Irritated by his gloomy sullenness, she sprang up and stood beside him, saying, coldly, "Well, Captain Lansdowne, when you are tired of admiring this sublime prospect perhaps you will descend from your eyrie and accompany us home." He turned on her his inflamed and angry eyes, and said hoarsely, " So you have come ? Where have you left that devoted lover of yours?" "Do you mean Carl ? " she said with a laugh. "He is a thousand times more devoted, I must say, than you are. Are you coming, or am I to go home alone ?" " Alone 1 Oh, surely not ! Cousin Carl would never allow that." " Captain Lansdowne," said Coralie, with flashing eyes, " enough of this absurdity J Come or stay, as you like ; but I tell you I am tired of your nonsensical jealousy, and I will endure ib no longer. lam not your wife yet, thank heaven, and never will be if you keep on like this. There, now ! " "Then, by heaven," he said, madly, " you will never be the bride of any man ! Mine you shall be, living or dead 1 " " Let me go 1 " she cried, passionately, as he caught her. " Madman, your wife I never will be!" She turned to fly, but he caught her. There was a struggle, a false step, a dreadful cry, and something went over the beetling cliff, down and down, and lay, crashed and mangled, on the rocks below. That cry brought all the rest rushing in terror up ; and, with madness in his face, Hazel Lansdowne stood on the cliff alone. " Lansdowne, where is she ? where is my cousin ?" cried the voice of Deering, as, white with undefined terror, he looked in that ghastly face. " There," said Lansdowne, with a maniac laugh, pointing far down, "beyond your reach for ever ! You have danced your last dance with my betrothed to-night. Follow her, if you like ! " " Murderer — devil ! " said Deering, grasping him by the throat ; " you shall hang for this. Here — help me 'to arrest this .murderer ! " Another laugh answered this. Flinging Mm away as though he was a child, the maniac, with a shrill, awful scream, sprang over the cliff and disappeared. They found them both stone dead, bruised, bleeding, and mangled beyond recognition. The legend is still extant, and told to every traveller as it is here told to you ; and to this day the lofty rock is called "Dead Man's Cliff." — New York Morning Journal.