A ROMANTIC ELOPEMENT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1752, 19 June 1888, Page 3

A ROMANTIC ELOPEMENT.

The Campbelltown settlement was startled out of its usual placidity on Monday by the announcement that a very unusual kind ot elopement had taken place. It appeears that Mr John Mudford, a Bettler living on Jones' line, on coming into the house at dinner time, from a paddock in the immediate vicinity where he had been working, instead of finding his dinner 'on the table found a note there, which had been written by his wife, informing him that she had made up her mind to leave him, that he would be better • without her, and that she intended to go to Feilding, and from thence to Wanganui. About the

same time it was found that two young men, named respectively David and Arthur Hickford, the first named of whom had been blamed by / rumor with too much familiarity with the defaulting lady, had also disappeared. They had left their residence in the morning in their working clothes, with tools, billy, etc., ostensibly to go to work, but an examination of their boxes revealed the fact that they had secretly removed everything belonging to them. Where the trio intend to spend their tarrymoon no one knew on Monday night, as there was no clue to the direction they had taken. There is a good deal of sympathy with the parents of the young men and the husband, as they are thoroughly respectable. The worst feature of the case is that the woman has heartlessly abandoned her family of four little children, one of whom is sickly and delicate, and the youngest a mere baby, being only twelve or fourteen months old. Later news proves that the three took passage by the train at : midday, went to Foxton, and afterwards travelled by the evening train northwards. The elder man has, it is said, victimised a Feilding storekeeper; in buying finery for the woman, and a Campbelltown settler would also like to interview him because of a debit balance.—Eangitikei Advocate.