THE rotund, bespectacled figure of Alistair Liddle, dressed in a double-breasted suit, looked every inch the respectable solicitor as he boarded the train.

Liddle, chairman of the Round Table, keen golfer and apparent stalwart of his local community in Forres, was heading for Edinburgh that day in December 1997. But when he stepped on the train, he left that life behind him and disappeared.

He was found again almost a year later but the old Liddle was gone and the transformation was there for all to see yesterday at Elgin Sheriff Court.

The new Liddle, or rather Rob Fox as he called himself when he went to ground in Cornwall where he worked as a flower and fruit picker, has shed almost 8st, lost his moustache, gained a shorter, trendier haircut and wears clothes that make him look years younger.

He also has a new woman in this new life of his, Paula Pirie, a fisherman's widow from Cornwall and mother of their eight-month-old daughter. Yesterday, outside the court, she branded the Scottish justice system ''feudal'' after a sheriff jailed Liddle for a year for embezzling #17,875 of clients' money.

The day he got on the train to Edinburgh, Liddle was supposed to be going to a Law Society of Scotland hearing, having been summoned by the society to answer concerns that surfaced during a routine inspection of his one-man firm's accounts.

He did not attend the hearing. He arrived in Edinburgh but did not disembark. Having withdrawn #5000 from his personal bank account, he kept on going to Cornwall. He had left behind his wife, his business, and a financial mess.

He lived and worked in Cornwall and might never have re-emerged but for being routinely interviewed, like other residents of St Ives, to be eliminated from a local murder inquiry.

He was forced to reveal his true identity and, with an outstanding fine of #300 for drink driving, was taken back to Scotland. His brother drove from Newcastle to pay the fine and Liddle swiftly returned south without even phoning his wife Annemarie, the childhood sweetheart he married at 21 and abandoned at 37.

Last month, Liddle returned to plead guilty to embezzling #17,875, having originally been charged with taking more than #34,000. Sentence was deferred for social inquiry reports until yesterday, when many of his former legal colleagues wished him will as he waited for his case to be called.

The court heard how Liddle, 43, disappeared after his personal and professional life collapsed into chaos. It heard that #12,000 of the money he had embezzled had been taken to ''fob off'' a client who had instructed him to start a damages action, which he had failed to do. The other #5875 was taken from an executory account with his one-man practice.

Bill MacVicar, his QC, told how his financial problems started when he paid #40,000 to R & R Urquhart, the Forres solicitors with whom he was a junior partner, shortly before he was ''expelled'' by them after disagreements.

Mr MacVicar said he was still trying to recoup that money. He was under-capitalised in his own business and his financial affairs and his health deteriorated.

He was suffering severe stress, hypertension, and he was genetically predisposed to depression. According to one psychiatric report, at the time he embezzled the money he was unable to make reasoned judgments. By December 1997, when he disappeared, he was in ''desperate straits'' and Mr MacVicar said he had been thinking of taking his own life, but instead fled to start a new one.

Mr MacVicar said Liddle had repaid the #5875 he had taken for his own benefit, and he and his partner were prepared to take a loan to repay the remainder of the money.

He appealed to Sheriff Kenneth Forbes not to jail Liddle, and said it was clear he would not offend again. His client had a clear and onerous responsibility to his new family and was the principal carer for his eight-month-old daughter.

However, Sheriff Forbes said he believed he had no option. He told Liddle he had taken into account all the mitigating factors, but said: ''You took steps not only to provide yourself with money but to remove yourself from the scene, and to ensure that your discovery was at least prevented for some time.

''There is no doubt you are guilty of a gross breach of trust as a solicitor in the management of funds and in my view that factor supersedes personal matters put before me today.''

Later, Ms Pirie, condemned the sentence. ''They didn't take any of the mitigating circumstances into account,'' she said as she left court, pushing her daughter, Iona, in a buggy.

''He was really, really depressed at the time. I know he is a professional, but would the sheriff rather he killed himself?''

Ms Pirie, 40, a mortgage adviser, was widowed when her husband drowned. She and her husband had two children.

She said: ''My little girl, Janine, lost her real dad four years ago in a fishing tragedy. She thinks the world of Alistair and at the moment she thinks she is going to lose him, too.''

She added: ''As long as Alistair keeps thinking about his little girl, he will cope in jail.''

The Law Society of Scotland said that it had acted to ensure Mr Liddle's clients were protected and that the practice was maintained as far as possible. The firm was sold as a going concern.

''The society was concerned for Mr Liddle's wellbeing when he went missing in 1997 and was pleased he was found safe and well. Where the society finds evidence of serious professional misconduct on the part of a solicitor, it has a duty in the public interest to refer the matter to the Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal.

''The society successfully prosecuted Mr Liddle before the independent Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal, and he was struck off for professional misconduct on July 22, 1999. Clients of Scottish solicitors are well protected.

''Solicitors contribute annually to the guarantee fund, a unique \consumer protection. If people can provide evidence of a loss, the society can make payment to cover the loss.''