POPPING THE QUESTION WITH A REVOLVER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 597, 21 April 1870, Page 3

POPPING THE QUESTION WITH A REVOLVER.

An attractive young lady, giving her name as Mary Emma Fort, New York, on the 9th of November last, went before Justice Dodge, at Jefferson Market, and told a distressing tale concerning her experience with a desperate suitor on the night previous. The lady said she had once beeu married, but was

divorced from her husband last summer. On Monday evening, Nov. 8, Henry Conway, a well-to-do engraver, and aged 29 years, called on Miss Fort, and during the evening, as the lady alleged, he made an offer to her of his heart and hand. The proposal to marry was treated with scorn by the lady, who immediately informed her suitor that his visits might cease. Growing desperate at being so cruelly rejected, young Conway drew a revolver, and springing towards the lady, said he would shoot her before be would see her married to another man. The weapon was held to the lady's breast for a moment to give her an opportunity to say she would accept, and save herself from destruction, and as no answer came the pistol was fired, but a quick presence of mind enabled the lady to thrust the weapon upwards, so that the ball passed over her shoulder into the wall.-fThe reckless lover became alarmed at his own rash act, and immediately rushed into the street. A physician, who happened to be in the house, heard the report and the lady's screams, and jumped out of the secondstorey window in his zeal to overtake the rascal. Conway rushed up the street, followed by the doctor, who shouted, " Stop thief I " At length a policeman turned up in the way of the fugitive, and he was brought to a stand-still, and was subsequently locked up at the station. He asserted, when arraigned before tho police justice, that the shooting was accidental. He was held to bail, however, to answer for felonious assault with intent to kill.