SINGULAR STORY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2218, 5 April 1881, Page 3

SINGULAR STORY.

The following singular story connected with the Tay Bridge catastrophe is told by the correspondent of a Dundee paper: —A gentleman loft his wife at homo in a large town in the North of England, and started in December, 1879, on a tour through Scotland, travelling for a firm. He kept his wife acquainted with his movements, and wrote to her from the Scotch metropolis about Christmas, telling her when she might expect him back. In his letter ho intimated that he hod arranged to go to Dundee via the Tay Bridge on the evening of Sunday, December 28th. The announcement made in the Press of the 29th that the bridge had fallen, carrying with it an express train and many passengers, greatly alarmed the gentleman’s wife, who feared, naturally, that her husband was among the victims. Her fears were confirmed by the fact that she received no letters from him, and could discover no trace of him anywhere. She went to Dundee, passed in review the bodies recovered, and eventually returned home believing herself to be a widow ; the firm for which the missing man had been collecting accounts, on their side, giving up the money as lost. Some time afterwards a gentleman, who knew the missing passenger well, chanced to be in London, and on entering an omnibus one day was amazed to see him in a corner of the Vehicle. Explanations were asked and refused ; but all who had an interest in the missing person’s fate were apprised of the discovery, and his whereabouts were speedily found out. The result of the inquiries made was that he had not gone, as he intended, by the train which went down with the Toy Bridge, but that after the accident, feeling sure that his friends would believe him to bo drowned, he went to London, squandered his employers’ money, married a young woman, and was enjoying himself at his ease when the truth was accidentally discovered. He was subsequently arrested for embezzlement, and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. This sentence has almost ex pired, but the prisoner’s fear is that he will only recover his freedom to be brought again before the court on a charge of committing bigamy. If this extraordinary story be true, his fears will, in all likelihood, be realised.