A DARK TRAGEDY.

Evening Star, Issue 3262, 4 August 1873, Page 3

A DARK TRAGEDY.

Incidents in daily life, says the London Daily Telegraph of April 5, after all, out-do the so-called sensation novelists. If a narrator of avowed fiction were to select the narrow platform of a locomotive as the scene of a murder—if he were to describe how hatred rose to homicidal heat between the stoker and driver—how, while the engine was in motion, one slew the other in the darkness of the night, cast his body on the line, and, leaping down himself, fled—his story would probably be set down as far-fetched and overstrained. Yet the tragedy we have briefly sketched was acted this week on the Limerick and Cork railway. A goods train, starting from Limerick on Wednesday night, passed Charleville, and then stopped. The astonished guard jumped from his box and ran up to the engine, but, when he arrived, neither fireman nor driver was visible. The light of his lamp, however, revealed traces of blood and hair. He at once searched the line on the back track, and first disco vered the driver’s hat, and next his dead body lying on the sleepers. Taking the train on to Buttevant, he reported the facts to the police, who set on foot a search after the missing fireman. They found him the next morning in a cabin not far from the railway, and got possession of his clothes, which were stained with evidence of his guilt. It is reported that he referred the death of his comrade to a sudden quarrel, caused by the driver’s violence towards him. Justice may findout the facts; but, however the final strife arose, the incident is one that fastens upon the imagination, and mu&fc take its place among the most remarkable class of crimes. Here, on an engine speeding through the darkness, two men fall into deadly feud, and one, quickly murdered, is cast forth upon the rails, while the other, stopping the train, flies for his life. It is a fearful example of crime brought about by uncontrolled temper, which gratifies its fury regardless of all consequences.