A TRAGIC FATE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 324, 10 June 1911, Page 9

A TRAGIC FATE.

STORY 01' AFRICAN LEPROSY. A remarkablo story of leprosy in South Africa lias been sent to the Wide World Magazine by Henry Meyer, to whom the story was related by one °L • ? ma ' n an ex-Government official named Locke. Mr. Locke, while travelling through a certain part of the country one evening, became weatherbound, and in accordance with the hospitable custom of the backwoods, he stopped at a lonely farmhouse and sought shelter. During that night he had a wierd experience, in which a shrunken, diseased man of gaunt frame took a prominent part. In the middle of the night the house caught fire, and on y with great difficulty was Mr. Locke abJe to rescue his hostess, a thin, frail, but dignified looking lady. But shock, disease and the flames had reduced the unfortunate woman to a sad condition, and it was a month before she was able, while lying in a hospital, to relate to Mr. Locke the following sad and eventful story of her Johannes Verster was a man pre-emi-nent amongst men—utterly fearless, tall and with features remarkable for their trank, energetic and commanding expression. ° a With his mother and the eight-year-old Peti'us, his brother, he lived on a comfortab'e little farm some ten miles trom Grahamstown. During one of his numerous journeys into town he had been the means of rescuing from cerhis ( lnl Ca u a K elderlj g entl eman and y Bto M" n S' at great risk to himself, a runaway pair of horses attaciied to a carriage. Between the rescued-Mr. Folkus and r 1 f aUg | ? r Ruth - and Johannes a npe friendship arose. Then came the only possible conclusion, and a day was fixed on which Johannes should take kuth home as his wife. Unfortunately, at this time there was trouble at the Verster farm. Petrus, the boy, began almost imperceptibly to evince strange symptoms, against which all the prescriptions handed down from past ages in the Verster family were of no avail. However, one June morning—by a strange coincidence, the very day, fifteen years back, from the night of the fire—the two lovers, Ruth Folkus and Johannes Friedrich Verster, were made husband and \vifc. She walked back down the church in | a dream of happiness, fingering the girdle of blossoms Johannes had made for lier that morning. She knew theri was not another man in Grahamstown to compare with her husband, and she covertly looked for the admiring glances levelled at him. Shortlived happiness! i The joyous faces around took to themselves looks of dismay, and all stared i aghast at the woman standing in the doorway of the church, her clothes and hair all awry, her breath coming and going in great gasps. It was Mrs. Verster. . "Petrus!" she panted, and fell fainting on the threshold. Johannes seemed to understand what his mother meant, for over his handsome face came a look of horror. While Ruth ran to the fallen woman he rushed outside, sprang on to the hack of thehorse his mother had ridden in on, took the churchyard fence at a bound, and was soon a mere speck in the distance. The wedding guests never saw him again. He ran the last three miles to his house, for the horse, dead beat, had fallen under him. In the farmyard stood a cart harnessed to four strong mules, and tied up near the gate was a well-groomed saddle horse. The cart conveyed to him all he wanted to know—they had come to take his little brother away to the leper establishment! God! He should go away, but not with them. To step up like thieves with! such an object! Brutes! to take the boy he loved better than himself whilst he was away paying his vows to God! He took in a situation at a glance—the boy, ready dressed for a journey, the articles of clothing lying about, all told of a projected departure. One man tried to stop him. Johannes felled him to the ground and snatched the lad up. Before their astonishment was over he was a good quarter of a mile away, the stolen horse galloping madly with its double burden. On, ever on, he dashed. Through rivers, down valleys of fresh green grasses, then back to the parched veldt again. And so he continued day after day, only stopping to get food and rest when nature made it imperative. At no time during the flight did the pursuit make itself known. '

A fortnight later, about 8 o'clock in the evening, Johannes mignt have been seen encamped at a distance of about forty miles from Kildorp, the boy sleeping comfortably on a bed of veldt grasses, covered by the upper garments of the man. We pass over five years. On or near the spot where the encampment had I been made a comfortable homestead now stands, surrounded by cultivated lands. To the south of the house, beside an angle in the garden fence, sit a man and .woman. They are reading the inscription scratched on a tiny stone cross: . "To the Memory of Petrus, Who died 20th May, 1889." Two years later the man and woman are again sitting in the garden. As he clasps her tightly towards him ho bends his head and speaks to her. He tells her something which causes her to blanch with fear and cling to him pitifully, almost convulsively. Xow she has her head on his breast, sobbing as if her heart would break, and he, now looking less robust than we have seen him, vainly tries to quieten her agony. W hat a terrible and fiendish change the succeeding years brought! That dread disease, leprosy, without respect to his fine physique, had seized upon Johannes, firief. melancholia and then madness, each succeeded the other, until the strong and noble Johannes Vcrster became a repulsive creature that babbled to itself through the long nights. His wife alone retained power to control him. Often in his madness he rehearsed that terrible ride from the old farm with Petrus, in his imagination, clasped tightly in his arms, tho while uttering exultant cries, as though, in his disordered mind, he saw his pursuers far behind him. On the approach of any person to the farm, which fortunately occurred but seldom, Ruth, his wife, would administer a narcotic sufficient to send him into a. sound sleep for many hours. By some mischance, on the fatal night, the maniac had recovered from the effects of the drtig much sooner than usual, and after frightening the guest had set the house on fire and perished in the flames. Shortly after making this confession of her bitter misfortunes the poor woman died.