WAITING IN THE CHURCH.

Cromwell Argus, 13 July 1870, Page 6

WAITING IN THE CHURCH.

A STORY IN TnRBE PARTS. (From Chambers's Journal.) PART lIL FEVER." Jack's wife had " como back to him from the grave"—from the grave beneath the coral tombs, down at the bottom of the Indian Sea. And another woman was waiting for him at the altar—waiting to become his wife. Mary was weeping at his feet—weeping with the bitterness of a mysterious disappointment; for how many thousands of miles had she come, longing for the glad smile of welcome with which her husband would rejoice over her when they two, who bad seemed to be separated by life and death, should rush into each other's arms; and how terribly sad was the grief that met her, in the place where sadness should have been ! And Jenny, whose soul was filled with this man's vows, was waiting, in a tempest of doubt, and hope, and fear, in the church yonder, wondering why he did not come to make her all his own. What was to be done ? That q\iestion should have occurred to me at once ; but my mind was paralysed, and for a while I could not think. Mary—dear, lost, wept-for Mary, safe again; brought home as by a miracle to Jack's arms! I have wept with joy; but the thought of Cousin Jenny—my own- dear heart, surrendered to him who now wanted none of her love—Cousin Jenny, dishonoured at the altar, widowed in her virginity, most wretched in the very moment of her chief gl or y—would force itself upon my mind. "False to thee, miserably false to thee, Mary," said my poor brother, in a voice broken by the vehemence of his emotion. " Nay, John, my husband, this is some fearful fancy of your own; truest, dearest, most loving of husbands, I cannot believe thee false," said as sweet a voice as ever poke to mortal ears. " Do not ask me, Mary—do not speak to me. Ask Ned. He'll tell you what I dare not tell—all the horrible truth." She turned to look at me, and something in my aspect frightened her, having more weight than all his wild words. She sprang to her feet, and seized me by the arm. " Brother Ned, tell me what he means." How could I tell her? how tell that other woman what must be told, and that' quickly ? But silence was worse than all we could have said. She turned her eyes from my face, back upon him, and then on me once more. That glance told her all. He was dressed for his wedding; and my attire was a witness stronger than words. I saw the terrible thought flash into her brain, and grew in an instant to con vie-' tion. Her gentle face, suffused with loving tenderness a moment before, underwent a fiery transformation, and, with a glare of angry, passionate, fearful jealousy, ahe turned upon him and cried: " You were going to be married again!" Poor, wretched, terror-stricken Jack; whose features were convulsed with the tempest of remorse that shook his soul, rose to his feet, fell on hilt knees, clutched at her hand, which she drew away from him with a gesture that, in its grand significance of outraged honour, was punishment enough for worse sins than his—and then abased himself at her feet, clinging to her skirts, as one who sues for pardon which he cannot hope to gain. I could bear no more. I rushed from the room, and hurried—swiftly, but mechanically, as a man impelled to some strange task by a power beyond himself—back to the church. A.s I entered the porch, pale, disordered, with all the bewildering misery of my mind visible in my countenance, Cousin Jenny read some terrible calamity in my aspect, and, turning to my mother with a face as pale and stony as the marble tombs around her, whispered hoarsely, " Mother, come away." " Ned, what is it ? Tell me—tell me, my boy—what fearful thing has happened?" But I could only echo Jenny's, hollow whisper : " Mother, come away!" We were at home, and Cousin Jenny had been left alone in her room, before I could tell what had happened. But when I found words to tell the truth to my mother, it seemed the wonders of the day were not at an end. "Youfoolish child: you almost frightened me to death. I thought he was killed. And that is all, i 3 it? Come back ? Of course she has come back ! The vexations of the world would not be complete without her; and, even if she had to come back from the grave, it must needs be—she was born to spoil my hopes, and to make my boy wretched." "This was all' my mother said; and then she hurried away to attend to Cousin Jenny. I had just time to wonder how it was that Jenny had asked me no questions, and whether, by some strange intuition, she had learned the tr,uth without my aid, when tho two women came back to me, together; and Jenny, with a glorious smile over-mastering all her agony, and lighting up her face with the purest joy I ever saw expressed in mortal countenance, came up to me, and said : " Oh, Ned, why did you not tell me at once ? You don't know what wicked things you made mo think. I believed that Jack was false to me; and now, when I learn the truth,

there is nothing the matter at all, but that the woman he loved best has come to him in time to save both him and me from a great sin, and U3 all from a terrible misery." What could I do, but kiss this brave, good girl, as she stood, so beautiful, before me; and then hasten to see whether the clouds were clearing away as pleasantly from the sky over Jack and his wife. When I got to my lodgings, there was no sound to guide me, and I hesitated to go into the room where I had left them. The picture of Mary's wrath was in my mind, and I had still some fean I opened the door as gently as I could, and ventured to look in: when—there were Jack and Mary, sitting hand-in-hand by the fireside, as pleasantly as if Jack's heart had never played truant, and neither shipwreck nor second love had come to separate them. Jack's face was flushed with overflowing gladness, as I remembered it had often been in the merriest days of our boyhood; and Mary's eyes were bright with a quiet depth of joy that put all my fears to rest. When she saw me, she got up and came to meet me, took my hand in hers, and, with the prettiest blush of timid pride, she said: " Brother Ned, don't think me a virago, though you saw me in such a wicked passion." ..'*..-. I told herewith a good deal of conscious "blundering, that I did not think her any 4 thing of the sort; but—but I thought her —well, I thought her as much an angel as if she had been to heaven, and come back again to teach us miserable human beings how to be perfectly happy. And good reason I had to tell her so—if I had only known it. "But tell me, Ned, what about dear Jenny i" she said; and then I saw, just for a moment, a shadow of that awful jealousy in her eyes that had blazed out on Jack an hour before. But it was only the ghost of that former look, which had died i out with the sudden passion that could not live causelessly in her gentle soul. I was trying to tell, in a collected fashion?, all that had occurred, when who should walk into the room but Cousin Jenny herself, in her ordinary everyday dress, and looking no more like a bride than she had done before widower Jack had come home. Close behind her marched my mother. So there were greetings and embracings, and all kinds of joyous exclamations. The three women were as loving and familiar in three minutes as if they had been together all their lives; and there isn't a credulous gossip in all Christendom who would have believed that Jenny and Mary had ever been rivals, or that my mother had ever said a word about Mary, save of most doting fondness. Jack and I were glad to slip away, and get rid of our blue coats and white waistcoats; and as for him, he was so full of delight at the restoration of his wife, that I absolutely believe to this day that before another hour had passed he had forgotten all about the wedding that should have been, and could hardly have been persuaded that he had made love to anybody but Mary in all his , ife. Such—so light of heart, so drooping in passing sorrow, so exuberant in native sunshine, so elastic of spirit—is my brother Jack. But how did " Mrs Jack" manage it ? —you want to know. How did Mary contrive to come back (as Jack said) from her grave at the bottom of the Indian Ocean? Why, first of all, you see, there had been a little mistake about this affair. When Jack lost sight of the boat that carried his wife away from the ship's side, | it did not go down to the depths of the sea, but only down into an awful valley of water —between two enormous moun tains of angry waves; and when it rose again in the darkness, a hundred yards away from the Star of the East, no eye could penetrate the intervening gloom, and no voice could reach the ears of the terrified watchers. The good little boat gallantly held its own till morning broke and the billows began to subside; and, drifting northward, it stranded next day on as lonely a shore as ever gave timely succour to shipwrecked mariners—the coast of one of the Farquhar Islands. It was many weeks afterwards that a trader, driven far off the Madagascar coast, espied the signal which the sailors had hoisted on the highest rock within reach; and then, when all were saved and carried toTamatave, many weeks more elapsed before a passage could be had to Mauritius. Thence the weary voyagers found their way to France ; and Mary, hurrying home, through the kindly aid of the consul at Bordeaux, had thus come through to London before any news could reach us to prepare us for a visitor who dropped upon us as from tho skies. And now there is but little more to tell. Brother Jack had to keep his time, and go back to India; and all our pressing persuasion failed to break Mary's deterraina- j tion to go with him. When we urged that she wanted rest, she said—"What rest could I have if I lost sight of my runaway husband again ? No, no; T shall be happy with him; and if, by the time we get back to India, I have not had ' a long sea voyage,' the doctors must have prescribed something which it is impossible to take." So our happy meeting was short, and the " farewell" came by far too soon. But the tears that wore shed at parting were not all sad,

" Brother Ned," said Mary, as we stood on the dftck of the steamer at Southampton, and the order was given for the return to the shore—*" Don't think that dear Jenny will fret long for Jack; and when you hava found her a husband, nobody will wish him more happiness than Jack's wife." ■ Then we were over the side, and the steamer was moving away; and when we could no longer see them, or retnrn their signals of adieu, mother forced a little laugh, and said, " Does anybody here want to go to India V "Not I, for one," said Cousin Jenny, drying her eyes at last. "Not I, for another," said I. . . And it is. just as well that neither of us did; for after a while, when the year was nearly round again, I began to wonder whether I might have hopes of Cousin Jenny after all. Not that I mustered courage, even then, to run the risk of another rebuff, by asking any straightforward questions, but I ventured one day to say to my mother: "Do you think that Jenny is still in the Bame mind about Jack, as she was before Mary arrived ?" " Well, upon my word, Ned, you ara a fool I" was the old lady's emphatic reply. I should have preferred a more explicit answer, or, at all events, something in the [.way of enlightenment on this subject to which my question had referred ; but this I found it impossible to obtain from that quarter. So there was nothing for it but to appeal to Jenny herself; and this at j last I managed to do, though in a somewhat roundabout way. I'm quite conscious that I did not deserve success ; but there are some things in this world that go by favour. No doubt I was a very stupid kind of confessor; but, for all that, in mercy and compassion for my manifold shortcomings, Jenny made a full and clear confession, that was by no - means terrible to hear. Orthodox vows were made, and sealed with a very agreeable formality. " But, Ned, you are a terrible goose," said Jenny, "or you would have found it all out sooner. How did you suppose I could think any more about Jack, after I saw what a slave he was to Mary?—as indeed he ought to be, for she's the dearest creature that ever was ; and I'm very glad she's going to be my sister-in-law, as well as yours. Besides, -when I came to understand myself, I found that I could never be content with a quarter of a heart, and that I was just intended to throw myself away on a dear, good, faithful goose like—like you." Well, well, it was all arranged, and T don't want to be any happier than I am. The p-eliminaries were settled a long timeago, and there was another visit to. St. John's ; on which occasion I had the satisfaction of appearing in the char icter of the bridegroom. There is a letter from India, announcing the arrival of a junior Ned in Brother Jack's bungalow, as the baby-bro-ther of ""little Mary," who was born a year and a half ago ; and the best " home news" is that a junior Jack—a miniature edition of all my virtues and personal beauties, revised and corrected by " Mrs Ned"—better known in the family as " Cousin Jenny"—is at this moment crowing lustily in my wife's arms. .-, I've only two things to say of myself, by way of parting egotism, and in these I believe Mrs Ned will agree: first, that, on the whole, I do not set up to be as clever or as worthy a person as my brother Jack; but, secondly, that; in one respect I think myself more meritorious than even he—in that, when Cousin Jenny condescended to go to St. John's the second time, I certainly did not keep her " Waiting in the Church."

THB OHASB AFTER THUNDER BOLT. [Spocial Correspondent of the S. M. Herald.] Fred. Ward, alias Thunderbolt, The circumatauces which led to the result I will, as far as I can, briefly relate. On Wednesday, 25th May, about two o'clook, as Mr Blanche and his wife were returning home from Uralla, and within about 200 yards of his own house, a man, riding one horso and leading another, rode up to him, and called out " Bail up!" stating that he was a robber, and would have no humbugging. On some silver being tendered, he refused to have it, stating that he knew the mistress had money on her, as he was laid on to them. He also reminded Blanche that a few evenings before he (Blanche) had refused to accept a £5 order as payment for a quart of rum. Subsequently he told Blanche that he might go on to his house. On reaching there, some other men came up from Carlisle Gully way, and Ward (as we shall call him) stuck them up also, and an old man named Williamson; and afterwards a dealer named Cappisote. After a little delay the dealer was permitted to proceed on towards Kentucky, Ward returning to Blanche's Inn, when he called upon the old man Williamson to shout, and also shouted himself, and sanw and danced. Ward, it appears, also took one of the horses from a young man he had stuck up, and was trying its speed when Senior-constable Mulhall appeared in sight, galloping down the hill "from Uralla. 1 may state that after the hawker .(Cappisote) was permitted to proceed on his journey, he went about a mile and a-half to a selector named Dorrington, and there taking his horse out of the cart, he put the saddle on, and by taking a wide detour from the road through the bush, managed to pass Blanche's house unobserved, and galloped to Uralla. Seniorconstable Mulhall and Constable Walker, immediately on receiving information from Cappisote, started in pursuit; but Mulhall's horse being the faster, he gained about half a mile on Walker. Mulhall then first arrived, and observed t»vo men near the fence, the elder of whom fired. Mulhall returned the shot, and, according to his own statement, his horse bolted at the discharge. By this time Walker was galloping down the hill, when Mulhall met him and Raid; "There they are: —T have exchanged shots with them. Go on and shoot the wretch." Walker kept right on, when the elder of the two endeavoured to cut into the road, but the young man blocked him. The two then galloped down the line of fence from the road to the bush. In wising his pistol, Walker happened to discharge it accidentally, and the shot went into the ground. Ward thereupon turned and tired, but missed his man. Ward then apparently spoke something to the young man, who turned away and left Wnird alone, with Walker following him. Ward then beckoned to Walker, and cried out " Come on," to which Walker answered " All right." For a little more than half-an-hour they raced through timber, over gully and creek, dry ground and boggy, up hill and down—Ward doubling like a hare, and Walker pursuing. It was a chase for life. Ward seemed to awaken to the fact that now the avenger was on his path, and, bold rider though he was, he was at last matched. In one place they galloped over a piece of ground where the tussocks of- earth and grass were standing like stumps, from a foot to two feet high, with a boggy waterhole about four feet deep, into which Ward floundered, and Walker followed. Throughout, the pace must have been terrific, as the tracks next morning testified. At length Ward turned up a bit of a hill, and, when on the highest part, turned as if to face Walker; but if so he altered his mind, for off he went until he was pulled up by a waterhole directly in front of him, and about 300 yards long. Ward at once dismounted and took to the water, swimming over. Walker, seeing this, rode up to Ward's horse and shot it dead, and then galloped about 200 yards down the creek to the end of the waterhole. Here Walker crossed the creek, and then saw Ward, who had swum across, divest himself of his coat and run up the creek about 150 yards, to where there was a narrow channel about 15 ft. to 18ft. wide. Across this Ward dashed, and had got out on the other side, when Walker arrived at the edge, and there they stood a while, about 15ft. or 18ft. of the creek between them. Walker told Ward to surrender ; but Ward, presenting his pistol, asked him who he was, and his name ; also whether he had a family. On Walker replying that he had a family, Ward told him he should think of them. " Oh !" said Walker, " I thought all about that; will you surrender?"—to which Ward replied, " No, I will die first."—" All right," said Walker, *' you or I for it," and immediately rushed his horse into the creek. Whether it was the sudden fall, or, as Walker supposes, his horse went on his knees, it so happenpd that the horse went under, head and shoulders, and whilst in that position Ward made a jump towards Walker, to receive his death-wound, for Walker at once fired, the ball entering under the left collar-bone near the armpit, and travelling dire*ct downwards and backwards to about §in. below the right shoulderblade, where it camenQUt* I Both lungs were pierced. Ward rose again, and grappled with Walker, who

then struck him over the forehead with hia revolver, and again knocked him unde* water. "Walker then turned his horse out of the creek, and, dismounting, went into the water, and pulled the man out, *ppai rently dead. Walker then, as it was get! ting dusk, rode back to Blanche's and cured a horse and cart ; but, although he searched for three hours in the dark, he could not find the body. The next morning he went out again, in company with! some others, and brought the body in. It Was afterwards identified as that of Fred. Ward, alias Thunderbolt. In the chase and final encounter, Constable Walker exhibited undaunted pluck and good rating, combined with much prudence. Few men in the excitement of a chase such as W a lkej? rode would"have had coolness enough to stop and shoot the bushranger's horse. It not only exhibits coolness, but also determination, for by thus cutting off Ward's chance of escape, he rendered him desperate, and, of course, the more dangerous to encounter. Besides, when Walker shot the horse, he had but one charge left, the other having been expended while chasing Ward. It appears as if Ward, finding what a sticker was after him, thought to double Walker by swimming across, and then, if Walker galloped round, either entice him to follow him into the creek, or else, by swimming back again, mount his horse and thus gain a start. If such was his idea, it was frustrated by Walker's promptitude in shojting the horse. Ward's action in the last encounter also showed the desperate strait into, which he was brought and Walker's pluck in facing him. With Thunderbolt it was life or death. With Walker it was simply duty. Thunderbolt knew that if he .started to run on the dry ground Walker would soon overtake him.; therefore he stood on the bank of the creek ready to avail himself of any chance which might turn up to struggle with Walker in the water, where as much depended on accident as strength. Besides Walker, though active, is but a slight made man. All these were chances in Ward's favor, if a hand-to-hand struggle took place in the water. It was indeed, as Walker said, "you or I for it." Ward's opportunity came when Walker's horse floundered head under. The rush was made, but fortunately Walker had one shot left, mid that, in taking Ward's life, very probably saved his own. From the direction tho ball took, and also the distance it tra.versed, Walker must have been directly over Ward, and within a very short' distanuo, when the shot was fired. Evidently, Ward's motive was to pull him off the hor.se, and one moment later ho would have had hold of Walker; but that iiionvfut sealed his doom—and Thunderbolt, the scourge of the norchcrn district, is no more.: The inhabitants of Uralla, especially those who bad ridden over the ground traversed in the chase, and viewed the waterhole where the final encounter took place, are loud in their approbation of Walker's pluck,' and a testimonial has been started (Mr George Weston heading it with -£2O). to testify in a substantial manner their appreciation of his cool bravery. Alexander Binney Walker is a young man, a native of the Colony, and like most really brave men, is a very quiet, unassuming person. The Sons of Temperance are proud of him, and say he shows that alcholic stimulants are not required to give a man dash and pluck., Walker belongs to the Belraore Division, Uralla.