AN AMUSING ELOPEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume III, Issue 610, 30 January 1872, Page 3

AN AMUSING ELOPEMENT.

The t ly (New Zealand) Times says : —It>* . many months since an elopemiiv^ xn low life was chronicled, the parties being a gold-field's batcher, carrying on business at a quartz reef township not a hundred miles from Kawarau, and a pert little little lady, who usually presided behind the tap of an adjoining hostelry. After the butcher's flight several of his creditors came to the conclusion that he had obtained goods by means of false pretences, and, acting in the interests of commercial morality, set the police in motion. Full particulars of the transaction reached Invercargill by telegram, and the police were requested to wait the arrival of a certain steamer at the Bluff, en route for Melbourne. The attempt that was made to catch the absconder is thus described the Southland Times: —The steamer arrived and a searching investigation ensued, but the " missing knight of the cleaver" could not be found. The supposed partner of his flight—the ex-land-lady—was there sure enough ; but above and below, from stem to stern, the vessel was searched, and the gallant butcher could not be seen. The ship's officers and passengers had observed a gentleman on board resembling the one sought for, but still the fact remained that now, when he was most urgently wanted, he could not be had. The police clung to the steamer until the pilot left her some distance down the straits, and still their man did not appear. All this time the lady preserved an amount of tranquility, which showed she had implicit confidence in the security of the joint venture. Before dealing with subsequent events, which we may explain have been communicated to us on reliable authority, it is but right to add that the captain and officers of the vessel were untiring in their endeavours to discover the culprit. After the pilot had left, and indeed after the steamer had got clear of the New Zealand coast, the veritable butcher quietly emerged from under one of those casks of slush or tallow such as are usually to be found on shipboard in the region of the cook's galley. The butcher, it appears, acting in concert with an accomplice, got beneath the cask, the top of which, being slightly indented, admitted of a thin covering of tallow being filled in. The whole fabric was then lashed down to the deck, so as to prevent any chance of its hidden mystery being revealed. The cask was so neatly arranged with its tallow covering, that no one, not even a lynx-eyed policeman, ever dreamt for a moment that it was aixght but what it represented itself to be, viz.. a receptacle for refuse from the cook's coppers. The escape was so managed - with consumate skill, and there is some reason to assume that a portion at least of the proceeds of the squatter's mob of fat cattle went as a reward to the ingenious party or parties by whose assistance the goldfield's butchei succeeded in preserving his incognito at the Bluff. The last heard of the pair was that they had arrived safely in Melbourne.—From the Sydney Empire.

Spurgeon tells the following • —" I like the story of the servant maid who, when she was asked on joining the Church, 'Are you converted ? ' answered, ' I hope so, sir.' ' What makes you think you are really a child of God ? ' ' Well, sir, there is a great change In me from what there used to be-' ' What is the change ? ' 'I don't know, sir, but there's change in all things ; but there is one thing, I always sweep under the mat now.' "