IN LOVE WITH A GIPSY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1909, 27 June 1889, Page 4

IN LOVE WITH A GIPSY.

Here is a story quite in the ancient style of romance which the dirt and dust of reality have been past destroying. At Eastbourne recently a remarkable elopement case was investigated. Mr Smith, a wood merchant, charged Andrew Dighton, a young gipsy, with unlawfully eloping with his daughter Caroline. Mr Smith stated that his daughter was under eighteen years of age, and had manifested a strange passion for the young gipsy, who is a good looking youth about her own age. Mrs Smith sent her daughter out shopping, but instead, she went to Dighton and urged her gipsy lover to elope with her from Eastbourne. He strongly refused, but Caroline pleaded so passionatelv with him that he was forced to submit, and they left the town secretly, taking with them a small tent. They could not pitch this the first night, so the lovers sought shelter under a hedge. They tramped day after day, and camped out at night in the Sussex lanes. The runaways passed on through Kent, followed by their father and the police, but it was not until the girl was found living with Dighton in the tent on Plumstead Marshes that the detective caught up with them. There Miss Smith and her sweetheart protested strongly against returning home, and Dighton was arrested. The Magistrate discharged the gipsy, who pleaded that the girl had proposed and urged the elopement against his will, and that he did not know she was under eighteen. Caroline did not aUqw her adventures to rest, even with the termination of the case, for a scene in the streets followed the discharge of the gipsy. The girl struggled violently to free herself from her father’s grasp, and loudly appealed to be allowed to Join Dighton at his tent. The girl’s excitement and cries created much sympathy amongst the crowd that witnessed the incident.