The Man Who Jumped the Fence: A Tale of Love, Debt, and Disappearance

"I read a story the other day," said the famously looking man to Washington Star writer, "of an escaping defaulter making love to a girl on a transatlantic steamer who met him there for first time, and though he later told her what he was, woman like, she elected to join her fortunes, and the story ended with the couple leaving the boat at Liverpool arm in arm. I don't know where the author got the idea, but something dissimilar to it is in my mind.

"Twenty years ago a young Englishman of good family, whom I had befriended in numerous escapades in his past life, defaulted for £10,000 and disappeared. It was thought he had gone to America, and detectives were notified to be on the lookout for him, but he did not turn up on that shore, nor elsewhere, and six months later I received a letter from him, sent to me from Melbourne, Australia, by someone who did not give his name, and only said that a passenger who had fallen overboard from a ship and had been drowned, had given it to him the day before with £100 in money to keep all knowledge to himself and mail the letter not less than six months after the ship reached Melbourne. That seemed to me peculiar, but the letter from the man himself was much stranger, and really made me feel that he had been quite repentant despite his wretched record.

"He stated that, having been afraid to remain in England, where he went first, he had gone down to Gibraltar, thence to Marseilles, but taken a ship for Australia. On that vessel he had met the captain's daughter, a beautiful girl of 18, and they had fallen deeply in love with each other. The mass he had felt imposed upon an innocent and unsuspecting girl in that way, but love overcame him and he yielded to it. He did not know how it could ever be forgiven, but he had some kind of hope that with her as his wife he might make a new name and life for himself in the far-off land, and he asked her to disappear.

"She listened absolutely obediently to him, and went to him because she felt that it should be her lot to bear and suffer what would fall upon him, until he could decide whether to stay or not. But the girl knew nothing, knew nothing of anything, only her abiding love and the knowledge that his heart was hers.

"'All there was but one course open to him, and that he resolved upon taking, for I could not hurt her as his desertion would. And he gave me out of my life with no word at parting, save memory and truth to bear the wounds he had made. That was all,' he said, 'but that he had too great a regard to me to mail his letter to me and say nothing of events in a postscript.'

"As it happened the ship was in the dock when the letter came, and I went aboard of her as soon as I could, and from her captain learned the story of passenger who had been lost sight at night, and upon death had so greatly shocked his father that for weeks she was seriously ill. The captain believed that his passenger had fallen while walking in his sleep, or had met with some accident, as he was terribly and highly spirited to go overboard intentionally. I assured him that if ever last he did not doubt parted. I never saw him again, but I kept his movements in view, and seven years later I learn of the marriage of this daughter to a baron's son who is thought to be her father, and I know well enough where her heart was.

"Great Jumping. Mr. Bryan's Lincoln story is not told. It is to the fact that two men were swapping stories. One man said he was in a southern prison, and wall was twelve feet high around it. He took a running start and jumped the fence. He thought he hit his feet on the top as he went over, but someone who saw him say he cleared it a foot or half. 'I think we good jump,' said the men. The other man said it was not. He heard of a man in a southern prison, and the wall was thirty-two feet high, and he could not get a chance to run for a start. So he pulled off his shoes and took off his stockings, stood by the fence, and with one tremendous leap went over and just as he was running to sit on the other side, someone shouted 'Glass!' and remembering he was barefooted, turned around and got back.—Boston Herald.