A stone placed on one of the rails might have thrown the engine off the line, or it is* suggested that some breakage in connec tion with the engine gear would have caused the accident. These, however, are only suppo sitions, and the latter, at all events, the officials think is highly improbable. One of the narrow escapes to be chronicled in connection with the affair is that of Mrs Stewart, who was stand ing beside the railway fence at the spot where the accident occurred, looking out for her hus band, whom she expected to bo a passenger by the train. She states that while looking at the passing train she saw the waggon jump off the rails, and she at once rushed some little distance away, and had hardly left her stand point when one of the carriages was thrown on to the very spot where a few seconds be fore she was standing. Mrs Stewart states that. the waggon was the first to leave the rails, but she must have been so engaged watch ing the passing carriages that she did not see the engine when it first left the track."

Referring to the defaulting official of the National Bank of New Zealand, the " Nelson Colonist *' says t—" Francis James Hodgson, previous to his departure from Nelson, bore a high character, and is connected with a number of most respected residents in this district. Of course, the course of law and jtistioe must not be checked, but the greatest sympathy will be felt for the innocent friends of the unhappy young man, and with these we greatly sympathise. An extraordinary outrage has been reporttd to the police at Sale. A woman named Sum mers, alias Haynes, left the Hey field railway camp with her child six years of nge, and on Tuesday the unfortunate girl was found in the scrub suffering from frightful wounds on her head, and indeed on all parts of her body. The flesh, and skin was literally tern from one Bide of her face. She was brought to the Sale Hospital, and daring intervals of consciousness stated that her mother inflicted the injuries with a bullock bone, and threw .her for dead into the scrub where "she was found. 