A SENSATIONAL STORY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2390, 2 August 1892, Page 3

A SENSATIONAL STORY.

A story which, if true, is (the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph remarks) one of the most sensational on record, readies Paris from the Spanish Frontier. A farmer and his wife, living at Peralada, nearFigueras had saved up £6O in order to hire a substitute to serve in the army for their son who had been called upon to join the colors. The parents, accompanied by their boy, set out the other day for Gerona in order to find the substiute, leaving their daughter Dolores to keep house in their absence. Meanwhile a local bad character named Foulanou, who lived in the next house to the farmer, overheard the latter and his wife as they were conversing about the object of their proposed visit to Gerona, He also learned through his eavesdropping operations the amount of money raised, and heard the fanner's wife locking it up in a wardiobe. When the coast was clear of everybody but Dolores, Foulanou —his face covered with a mask—entered his neighbour's house, closed the door after him. and going to the kitchen there seized the girl, gagged her, and bound her to an iron post which supported a beam. Standing over Dolores with a knife, the robber made her point to the place where the £GO was secreted. As he was putting the money in his pocket the girl muttered some words of reproach ; whereupon Foulanou said that as she recognised him despite his disguise she must die. She could, however, chose the manner of her death; whereupon the girl said she preferred hanging to being butchered with the robber's, knife. The most sensational part of the story is its climax. Foulanou, in trying the rope which he intended for the maiden, gqt his neck l)opele§sJ.y entangled in it, and was accidentally strung up himself. Then there arrived m> +^ ie scenej like a true hero of romance, the lover of Dolores, who was accompanied by a crowd of villagers a>id Foulanoa's wife. Tfye rqbher was released from his perilous position, restored to consciousness, and handed over to justice. The curtain fell as Dolores was lifted from the ground by her deliverer, whi]e the robber's, wife went off into a fit of hysterics.