The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-12

upon election day.
 Not often does a country justice trial enlist the services of two lawyers and develop disputed legal questions which may go to the highest court to secure final adjudication. These con- ditions exist in the non-support pros ecution of Herbert McFarlane heard last week before Justice Plnkney ana adjourned to the 17th when Attorney J. Moss Ives for the state and Attor- ney Howard Taylor for the defense will present briefs embody1ng the1r contending claims. In the event or conviction an appeal is certain ana II the second trial results adversely to the defendant the case will probably go to the Supreme Court of Errors. The complaining wife, who says sne left her husband mainly because she believed him to- be affected with re- pulsive disease, had made formal de- mand upon him that he provide for her support while she lived apart from him. This he refused to dp, claiming that her desertion absolvel him from legal liability for her maintenance. The evidence in support of her allegation regarding his physical condition was very inconclusive She virtually ad- mitted it to be merely a surTnise on her part while McFarlane offered a specific denial. asserting that he was in a sound physical' condition except for an occasional temporary impair ment resulting from an operation for No medical evidence bearing on the. question at issue was offered by either side. Regarding her accusation of cruel treatment it ap- peared that his worst overt offence in that direction was his throwing of his pipe at her as a retort to a very in sulting remark. In divorce suit the issues raised would be of the com monplace order, but in a non-supQort case, which is a criminal proceeding, they are decidedly unusual and inter esting.
 . The kidnapping scare which last week agitated the occupants of the Lobster Pot cottage on the Mark Twain estate was evidently case of nerves and long distance imagination. A-enry T. F'inck, the musical critic, his wife, their little boy and two or three of Mrs. Finck's woman friends have been living at the place during the summer and when last Thursday af- ternoon they saw two strange men with an auto lingering about the vii cfn1ty they evolved the theory that the men had abduction designs on the boy and telephoned hurry call to Constable Warner to quickly come and grapple with the situation. When he arrived he found nothing to grapple with except a state of panieky flustra ton in the Finck household. Learn ing that the auto had contained some digging and branch cutting imple ments he concluded that the suspects were nothing worse than fern ana mountain laurel marauders. Trespas- sers of this class have recently been less frequent in their raids than they were formerly because they doubtless know that property owners are on the watch to apprehend them. The con- stables explanation to this effect failed to reassure the Fincks. however, and at their request he and his companion kept fruitless vigil about the premises the rest of the night. redecting mean while upon the persistency with which fears engendered by the Charlie Ross case of forty years ago remained in peoples minds.
 The movement started last fall for