SOCIAL SCANDAL DEVELOPMENT.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 122, 3 October 1885, Page 5

SOCIAL SCANDAL DEVELOPMENT.

The "Muir Mystery, or the fiutt Tarring Case," is assuming such large proportions, and promises such extensive ramifications, that I may perhaps be pardoned if I stray a little outside my proper sphere as a retailer of political goesip, to' say that Rumour's tongue wags in a mo3t excruciatingly sensational manner in connection with the whole subject. Ido not, of courso, pretend to vouch for the truth of anything — I know not if the tale be true ; As told to me, I tell to you. I told you yesterday morning that it was rumoured certain other members of the Legislature besides the Colonial Secretary (who has already appeared in the witness box) were to be called upon to appear. One startling rumour is to the effect that the counsel for the prosecution have got hold of the second man supposed to have been implicated in the assault, and still more astounding, that he has turned, Queen's evidence, and will make jt, clean breast of the whole affair. Rumour goes furthur and sayß that he not only will confess, but that he has confessed, and that the tenor of his story is that he and others with a cabdriver who has since gone to Sydney were hired by a certain person (whose name is also freely bandied aboufc) for the aggregate sum of £20 to commit the assault. The legal gentlemen connected with the case very naturally refuse to supply any information, but it is confidently Btated that in point of sensational interest the proceedings so far have been quite of a preliminary kind, and that revelations of a most astounding kind will be made on Wednesday next, when Walden comes up again on trial. The two legislators mysteriously spoken of some days ago in connection with the Hutb tarring case are eaid to have been showing portraits about Bellamy's, which belong to Muir, the tarred gentleman, who lost them from a portmanteau in his room at the hotel. It is rumoured that the said legislators are to be called upon to explain how they became possessed of these portraits,