Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1874-06-01
The Lost Child.
A TRUE TRADITION OF wACHUsETT.

Teu years ago plOHteIS NoIO HUI SHoihS
Indians nor hunting grizzly bears in the
Sierra Nevadas or the Rocky mountains,
nor building Pacific railways, nor shak-
ing with chiils and fever In the valleys
of the Sacramento and the Yellowstone.
Neither chills nor railways had ever been
heard Of But then, as now, fighting
Indians was the occasional necessity of
the pioneer and if grizzlies did not
then dispute the pioneers right to his
newly found home. divers Of their con-
geners, nearer or more remote, claiming
seizin thereof for long periods whereof
memory of neither man nor beast ran to
the contrary. refused to recognize any
other title than their own, whether bas-
ed upon discovery, disseizin or conquest.
The pioneers of America were then rough
hewing New England. Robert Reyes
was hewing out for his family home on
the eastern slope of Wachusett noun
tain, ''in ye township of Princeton, in
ye Countie of Middlesex. (the northern
part of Worcester County was originally
included in Middlesex,) and colonie of
Massachusetts, Bay.
Mountains, like everything else, are
great or small only by comparison. Wa
chusett may be very humble mountain
as compared with Shasta, and other
snowy peaks of the great continental
ranges of America But in the estima-
tion of the people who live within sight
of Wachusett, it is a great mountain
and they call it by way of eminence, the
mountain. Do they not visit it, and
boast that they have actually ascended
its peak once, twice, thrice or more, in
the course of their lives Have not di-
vers enterprising persons built famous
summer taverns upon it and about 1t for
the accommodation of its admirers Is
not the mountain more infallible proph-
ct than ever Old Probabilities himself
to the farmer, who is able according as
Wachusett hath his rain-cap on. or 9TH
erwlse in the morning, to divine the
prospect of the day for hay-making, or
other fair weather work ? | have seen
an alpenstock, carried by a Worcester
County traveller, whereon was affection
ately engraved the name of Wachusett
IN the same column with the Jungfrau
and the Matterhorn.
1t was in l751 that Robert Keyes
commenced his pioneering on the slope
of Wachusett and the same year his
wife bore to him daughter, whom the
parents named Lucy, and who was to be
the subject of a tragic mystery, which
should battle all attempts to solve it for
more than half a century then to come.
The Keyes family was the fourth that
settled in Princeton, and at that time
the parents were about forty years old.
Besides Lucy, they had also two other
daughters considerably older than she.
There was distance of about mile
from the clearing which Robert had
made, and in which he had built his
house, pond called Wachusett pond,
whittier the two elder sisters went one
April morning in 1855 to get sand for
house-cleaning. The route to the pond
lay through the woods, and was only in
dicated by blazed trees Unobserved by
the elder sisters, Lucy, then four years
old, followed them into the woods The
mother felt no concern about the absence
of the child, supposing her to be in the
care of her elder sisters, till their return
without her when it appeared that they
were unaware that she had followed
them, and had seen nothing of her either
going or returning.
Search was Immediately commenced by
the mother and elder sisters, who explor.
ed the woods all the way to the pond
without finding any trace of the missing
child. Loud and earnest calls of the
child's name are only followed by rever
berating echoes from the mountain sides
The father, ploughing in his field, hears
the eager calls, and joins the searchers
He suggests thatprobably Lucy has fall
en- asleep upon some rock, where sh.
may have set down to rest or to play
and does not hear their calls. He raise
his own voice to the highest pitch anc
in the stiffness of that April morning
his call to his child might have beel
heard for miles. But there is no answer
The woods are now more carefully search
ed. Every place that could be suppos
ed to conceal child is examined anc
the forenoon is spent before they ar,
aware of it. 1t occurs to the father tha
| the child may have fallen into the pond
whittier he hastens, dreading the discov
cry that he expects. The margin of th
} pond is sandy. and he looks for littl
footprints in the sand, but can find none
t He peers anxiously into the water, bu
? fails to make the dreaded discover,
E Meantime it occurs to the mother tina
E while they have been looking for Luc
t in the woods. she may have herself re
4 turned to the house "a possibility tha
r she wonders they did not think of BE-
e fore), and with her daughters hurrie
home IT, l., 1oa.. :