BACKWOODS LIZ.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 443, 5 February 1890, Page 3

BACKWOODS LIZ.

A Blood- an d-Thunder Love Story That is Brief. I _____ It was her wild beauty that made me love her. That I, Ned Gray, a bachelor of leisure, should have fallen under the thral,jom of Backwoods Liz seemed absurd, and yet my passion was honest and sincere. To-night I was to meet her in a lonely canyon, for her father, with whom I boarded, was not fond of my attentions to his adopted daughter. I had not long to wait. I saw by the terror in her face that something had happened as she hurried toward me. ‘I have come to warn you bo fly,’she said, earnestly. 4 My cousin Jim has returned. He has heard about you and lie swears he will.have your life. They, are sitting together, my father and he, down in the cabin now, drinking together, and plotting your destruction. Go, before it is too late !’ The moon had risen higher now and her light made all things visible. Scarcely had the words left Lizzie’s lips, when, with a cry of rage, a man sprang from among the pines, and made as if to seize her. Instinctively, as I recognised Ben, I flung her round beyond his reach, and placed myself before her. That movement saved my life. For, on the instant, the report of a gun was heard, and old Ben Allen, with one agonised cry, fell dead before us, while Liz, with a wild scream of horror, dropped on her knees beside him. I stood for one brief second bewildered, i horror-stricken, then darted away in the direction whence the shob had been fired. The crashing of the underbrush, as under the foot of one in full flight, guided me. In among the pines I picked up a gun, | whose warm and still smoking barrel showed that it had been the murderer’s weapon, but I found nob him who had fired it. So, after a hasty, fruitless search, I returned to the scene of death, where I found, despite the lonely spot and lateness of the hour, a crowd had already collected —rough, uncouth fellows, woodchoppers and charcoalburners and the like, all sworn friends and comrades of the Allens, and natural enemies of all men richer than themselves. They received me with a howl of loathing. The circumstantial evidence they brought against me in court was terrible, and a verdict of guilty seemed almost a foregone conclusion, when suddenly there staggered into the courtroom a pale, worn, haggard woman, and fell—with a moan of anguish —prone at the Judge’s feet. No one knew her. An officer came forward to take the wretched, ragged creature away. Then, as he lifted the senseless form, the head fell back, a miserable bonnet dropped from it, down tumbled a mass of magnificent, long black hair, and in an instant we recognised—lying apparently dead before us—Liz of the Pines. It was all over directly. She revived and proved my innocence and Jim’s guilt; told of the plot against my life, Ben Allen’s theft of the gun and that Jim had borrowed it. It appeared that she had seen him fire the fatal shot, and that when I darted away and she fell fainting with horror he had returned and, lifting her in his arms, secured her in a hut near by until the crowd removed me. And then he had carried her further away, and beaten and starved her in hi 3 desire to force her into marriage (more than ever desirable now, considering what she knew against him,) until reduced to sickness, and almost death, by suffering, she had made good her escape at last, and arrived in time to save her faithful lover —her husband before that evening’s sun had set. The Judge who had been so near condemning me to death married us—poor and sick and ragged as sho was—in that very hour. Who but I should nurse and comfort and console her for all the pain and sorrow that my love had brought ?