The Cambria freeman. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1867-1938, 1870-10-13
CIrcumstantiaI Evidence.

Reviewing the history of its State. news
paper Of Virginia recalls case in which
that insiduous kind of evidence which is
styed "circumstantial' failed to rob man
OF his life only to leave the remaining years
of that life a prey to something more cruel
than death. In the summer OF 1907, about
four years after her marriage. the wife OF
John Sigans, young ma1 residing in lay
or county, was missing from her home one
morning.; nor could any trace of her be
found, or any reasonable explanation of her
absence devised. She had retired to slum>
ber, as usual, with her husband and infant,
on the preceding night; and her husband,
according to his own steaofast assertion,
awoke In the morning to find himself and the
babe sole occupants of the couch. Being
unable te offer any kind of help towards the
eucidation of the mystery, Sigans presently
became an object of ominous suspicion, and
at last, upon the testimony OF nelghbor
named Current W as taken before maSis-
trate for examination. The witness" testi-
fed that on the night of the alleged disap-
pearance he had been aroused from his sleep
by the firing Of a gun in or near Slgans'
house, followed by sound like female
crv. He also testified that he ''believed" a
murder had been committed, and woman s
BODY buried under heap of stones near his
neighbours housed This last piece of testi-
n,ony went for nothing, as the mluutest
search failed to reveal any hidden corpse /;
but that about the gun firing, though in
sufficient to hold the accused m any legal
bond, decpened the suspicion OF the public
against him.
The unhappy man. despite lis protests OF
| innocence, was shunued from that day iorth
| by all bis former friends and neighbors aud
| l. fnlI fatat m
/ own care, trained the little one 70 Judge and
despise his father as his mothers murderer.
! The boy, as he grew up to manhood, actu-
/ ally prosecuted his parent until the latter
died Of a broken heart. and then seemed 10
share the relief avowed by his other kindred
! at their rddance from one who had been a
horror and disgrace to them. Ia fact, Ion
no less than forty years, Currents testimony
was accepted as establishing the moral Ger
tainty of John Sigaps' guilt, really inconse
/ quent as that testimony had been; but al
| the end of nearly ha'f a century from the
Eight If the wife's disappearance, in l84S
after Sigans and Currant had both passeC
away, Mrs. Sigans herself re appeared in be-
old home! See confessed, says the Graltor
| Sentinel that she had never been over ont
hundred miles away had fed by nigh
from the side of her unsuspiclOus, s!tepln:
| husband TO the protection NI anotber mac
changed her name, and wished to be as ont
dead to those whom she had deserted. Ih,
gun" heard by Current must have beer
the noise she made in falling upon the stool
of her home as she fed, and the ''femae cry
her involuntary exclamation of pain and ter
ror. Thus, upon the strength of purely cir
cumstantial evidence, and that so triflipe
an innocent and cruelty wropged mau ha'
been placed under ban of oxcommunica
ton from all that is merciful ia life, an
persecuted into disboDored grave by th
hatred of his own child.