ABSCONDING FROM NEW

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 201, 7 December 1871, Page 7

ABSCONDING FROM NEW

ZEALAND.

( From the' ''Evening Star.")

It is not many months aince we chronicled an elopement in low life, the parties being a goldfield's butcher carrying on. bus'ness at a quartz reeling township nob a hundred miles from Ivawarau, and a pert little lady who usually presided behind the tap of an adjoining hostelry. After the butcher's flight several of his creditors o-une to the conclusion that he had obtained goods by means of false pretences, and acting in the interests .of commercial morality, set the detective" police in motion. Full particulars of the tr.ms action reached Invercargill by telegram, and the police were requested to wait the arrival of a certain steamer at the Bluff e?& route for Melbourne. The attempt that was made to catch theabsconder k thus described by the " Southland Times :'.' — The steamer arrived and a searching investigation ensued, but the missing " knight of the cleaver " could not \>e found. The supposed partner of his flight — the ex-landlady — was there, sure enough, but above and below, from stem to stern, the vessel was searched, and the gallant butcher co.uld not be soon. The ship's officers aud passengers hid observed a gentleman on board resembling the one sought for, but still the fact remained that now when he was most urgently Avanted he could not be had. The police clung to the steamer until the pilot left her some, distance down the straits, and still their man did not appear. AH this time the lady preserved' an amount of tranquillity which showed she had implicit confidence in the security of the joint venture." Before dealing with subsequent events, which we may explain have been v communicated to us on reliable authority, it is but right to add that the captain and the officers of the vessel were untiring in their endeavors to discover the culprit. After the pilot had left, and indeed after tho steamer had got clear of the New Zea-

land coast, the veritable butcher quietly emerged from under one of those casks of slush or tallow such a:s are usually to be found ou ship-board in the region of the cook's galley. The butcher, it appears, acting in concert with an accomplice, got beneath the cask, the top of which being slightly indented, admitted of a thin covering of tallow hAng filled in. The whole fabric was then lashed down to the deck, so as to prevent any chance of its hidden mystery being vevealwl. - The cask was so neatly arranged with its tallow covering, that no one, not even a lynx-eyed policeman, evpr dreamt for a moment that it was aught but what it represented itself to be, via., a receptacle for refuse deposited from the cook's coppers. The escape was managed with consummate skill, and there is some reason to assume that a portion at least of the proceed:of the squatter's mob of fat cattle svent as a reward to the ingenLoiit* party or parties by whose assi^tau..-^ die goldnelds butcher succeeded in his incognito at the Bluff. The lnst heard of the pair was that they had arrived safely in Melbourne. Their further movements ai'e not known, but it is not at all improbable that they may eventually find their - way into the bosom of the Church of the First Born, established in the suburban district of o<ikleigh. If so, they should | attain ecclesiastical honors amougst these newly-fledged.