AFTER MANY YEARS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 115, 12 June 1909, Page 3

AFTER MANY YEARS.

UNEXPECTED MEETINGS, AMAZING AND AMUSING. During the hotted of the Boer War, a small detachment of British mounted infantry wwe isurromided by a strong force.of Boers. Thicker and thicker hailed tilie BotV bullete. The British force felt that the end was near; but at last, towards dawn, there came a crush of firing, and the Boers broke and ran as a company 01 New Zealanders charged them. The beleaguered force rushed out to help in the rout of their enemies, and, in the darkness, ran right in among their rescuers'. One of the latter, mistaking an English soldier for a Boer, raas about to brain him with the butt of his rifle, when the Englishman shouted, "Steady on! I ain't no blooming Dutchman!"

The other staggered back. "It'= Peter's voice!" he cried, in utter amazement. •"Good heavens, is that you, Frank?' came tllie startled reply. The two men were brothers, Peter and Prank Hillyer, and they bad not met Oi heard of one another since, eight years earlier, Frank had emigrated to New Zealand.

Few novelists could -paint a more dramatic scene than occurred a few week* ago in the police court at Market Easen, in Lincolnshire, when two old schoolfellows were suddenly confronted. One sat upon the ibench; the othci stood in the dock, charged with begging. Yet, forty years before, these two had been 'fellow-students at De Aston Grammar School. LOST-AND FOUND!

A story of, a strange meeting which has something of a pathetic touch comes from Paris. A woman—Delorinc by name—was 'walking with her little daughter, when she recognised a man in the uniform of a 'bank messenger, who was coining towards her. It was liei husband.

The two liatl quarrelled and parted four years More, ami neither had siuce seen or heard of the other.

■She stopped him and appealed to him to return to her. lie llew into a rage; she retorted, and a violent quarrel be gun. Suddenly the man went as white as a sheet. "1 have lost my portfolio! ■'' lire cried. "I am ruined!" Just then the little girl, who had been left behind, came running up. "Look what I have found!" she exclaimed, an. held up the missing case, which eon tained over forty thousand francs. The man, overcome with joy, snatched up the eliilil and covered' lier face with ki.«es. Then and there husband am! wife were reconciled.

Even more touching is the case of a London doctor. In the year 18!)8 lie and his young 'wife quarrelled and separated.' For some years he made 'her an allowance; then she wrote that she was going to Australia. BETTER TITAN A TONIC. The docter received the appointment of visiting physician io a consumptive sanatorium iu'a well-known South-Coast town. One day last spring, while he was examining new patients, a woman with traces of past beauty was brought in. At sight of the doctor she gave a slight ery, and dropped, fainting. The doctor recognised her as his long-lost wife, hut said nothing; and, after restoring her and prescribing for her, sent her hack to her room. Later, however. fce visited her, and. after a long talk, they were reconciled.

A curiously tragic meeting was that of two Irishmen—William Connollv and J'atrick Cmitwell. The two men met on a "lloat" on the Grand Canal, near Tiillamore, mid, not having seen one another for some time, were cordial in their greetings. "you see. v.v know one another jircttv well/ explained Connollv to a bystander. "We were bora on tlie same day and baptised in the same water" A couple of minutes later the "lloat" ■was run into by a barge and' upset. The two friends were both drowned, and on the following Friday were buried in the same churchyard.—-"Answers."