A TERRIBLE QUARTER OF AN HOUR.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1108, 28 July 1882, Page 4

A TERRIBLE QUARTER OF AN HOUR.

Mbs S. J. Middleton of Mobile, U. S., can certainly boast of as much nerve as any one of her sex. She was one evening in her boudoir putting away some article of jewellery, when she noticed that the peculiar position of a library lamp that was burning upon a chair in the back part of the room had thrown upon the floor, almost at her feet, the shadow of a man who was crouching under a broad-topped ornamental table in the centre of the room. She also remarked that the open hand of the shadow had but two fingers, and remembered that several desperate burglaries had recently taken place in the neighborhood, and a negro desperado was suspected, who was known to have lost two fingers. Instead of fainting with fear, or shrieking for help, the brave lady seated herself at the very table underneath which the miscreant lay concealed, and rang for the servant. “ Hand me writing materials, Bridget,” said she with perfect calmness. “ I want you to take note this instant to Mr Forfar, the jeweller, and have him send you back with my diamond necklace and ear-rings which I left there for repairs." The note was at once written and despatched, but, instead of being in the tenor that she had signified, it was a hasty a note to the jeweller, in which she succinctly stated her terrible position, and urged him to hasten to her relief with the requisite police assistance. The agonies which the refined nnd delicate woman underwent when left alone in the house, with the consciousness of the presence of that desperate robber prouohod under the very table upon which she leaned, and perhaps touched by her very skirts, can be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that Ihe police came and the robber was taken to prison.