Nelson Chronicle, Colne Observer, and Clitheroe Division News. — 1898-05-13 (Nelson, Lancashire, England)

PRICE WM. I:Ltirrt.sr, the absconding secretary of the Barrowford Industrial Co-operative Society Limited, has been the sensation of the week in this locality. Somehow or other Barrowford seems to be closely associated with sensations: One time it is murder, next robbery, then some deed of violent savagery and now it is fraud and embezzlement. The individual charged with committing the offence, and who is awaiting his trial, is no under-paid, half-starved unfortunate victim of rapacious sweating, whom cruelty and want has driven into crime on the contrary, he is • young man of good connections, well educated and carefully trained, and the i.ensiition in the case will not be fully understood until the charge has been investigated and the contributing cause of his downfall has been laid bare before judge and jury. That is what will give rise to public wonder if we mistake not, quits as much as some other elements in the case almost equally astonishing. We necessarily make no reference to the merits of tbe charge itself.  IT may interest people to know where the prisoner has been all these months, what be has been doing, and how it was that he decided at first to cut his home and country and then to return and give himself up to the police. Briefly it may be put thus: when the frauds were discovered young HARTLEY was given • fortnight in which to repay the money, but be failed to get tbe £lOOO required, and therefore fled to South Africa to avoid the disgrace of arrest and imprisonment. Flight wait his first impulse; it was natural and so easy. He travelled through the country but could get no work. A man's credentials are as closely enquired into there as they are at home. At Johannesburg be was suddenly confronted with another Nelsonian, who threatened to denounce him for the frauds of which he had received information, and he oontinued his journey a more miserable fugitive than ever.  Tuff man who threatened him was himself a fugitive and an outcast, but that made no matter. At length his money was done, and he returned to England, anxiously wretched, and resolved on giving himself up and thus seeking pesos of mind at least. Under the directions of his solicitor he spent some time at Blackpool, and at Bispham, but being in dread of identification and arrest, be had no sense of security either by night or day, and the fairest planes on eartb became like resorts of the tortured and the damned. He became mentally distrought, and gave himself up rather than suffer like that any longer. He awoke after his first night's sleep in the Nelson Police cells and declared he had slept better than be had slept for months. So far as his mind was concerned up to then he had been existing in a living hell; he saw a detective in every man, a danger lurking in every shadow, and the fear of arrest was always in his heart. But the agony of the fugitive he said was the very worst a man mid possibly hare to bear, much worse than the pain and sorrow of actual punishment. And so be surrendered.  WHOT the police are tracking an offender and do not overtake him, one's faith in their skill induces the belief that that offender has got clear away. It is well there is such general reliance in their capability. It very seldom happens that circumstances afterwards occur which throws the strong search light of actual knowledge upon that game of hide and seek in real life in which the stakes are liberty or captivity. But they have occurred in the case of young