The Wellington enterprise. [volume] (Wellington, Ohio) 1867-188?, 1879-04-10
AHoTHER's DARING.

AHoTHER's DARING.
The great golden eagle, the pride and
fear of the parish, swOoped down and
away with something in his tailor s: One
single, sudden female Strickland then
shouts and out-cries, as if a church spire
had tumbled down on a congregation at
sacrament
Hannah LamOnd's barin! Hannah
Lamond's bairn !" was the loud fastspread-
ing CRY. THE eagles taen aft Hannah
Lamond's bairnr" and many hundred
feet were in another instant hurrying to-
ward the mountain
Two miles of hill and dale, and copes
and single, and many intersecting brooks
lay between; but in An incredible short
with people The eyrie was well known,
and both old birds were visible on the
rock edge. But who shall scale that diz-
zy cliff, which Mark Stuart, the sailor,
who had been at the storming of many a
fort once attempted in vain All kept gsz-
ing, or weeping, OF wringing Of hands
rooted to the ground, or running back and
forward like so many ants essaying their
new wings in discontinue.
whats the use-whatS the use % any
puir human meanss We have nae power
but in prayerw And many knelt down
fathers and mothers thinking of their own
babies-as if they would force the deaf
heavens to hear.
Hannah Lomond had all this while been
sitting on q stone with q face perfectly
white, and eyes like those of mad person
fixed on the eyrie. Nobody noticed her;
for strong as all sympaihies with her had
been at the swoop of the eagle, they were
now swallowed up in the agony of eye
sight.
"Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee
wean baptised in the name of the Father,
and the Son and the Holy GhOst!"
And on uttering these words, she flew
off through the brakes and over the huge
stones, up-up-up-faster than ever
huntsman ran to the death fearless as a
goat playing among the precipices- No
one doubted-no one could doubt-that
she would soon be dashed to pieces. But
have not people who walk in their sleep,
obedient to the mysterious guidance of
found footing, even in decrepitute, along
the edge of unguarded battlements, and
down dilapidated staircases, deep as draw
wells or coal-pits, and returned with open,
fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed, to
their beds at midnight. 1t is all the work
of the soul, to whom the body is a slave
and shall not the agony Of a mothers pas
81 n-who sees her baby, whose warm
mouth has just left her breast, hurried off
by q demon tn hideous death-bear her
limbs aloft wherever there is dust to dust
till she reaches that devouring den, and
fiercer and more furious than any bird of
prey that ever bathed its beak in blood,
throttle the fiends that, with their heavy
wings, would fain flap her down the cliffs
and hold up her child in deliverance.
No stop-no stay; she knew not that
she drew her breath. Beneath her feet
Providence fastened every root How was
she ever to decend? That fear, then, but
once crossed her heart, as up-up-up 10
the little image made Of her own flesh and
blood.
The God who holds me up now from
perishing-wlll not the same God save me
when my child is at my breast ~
Down came the fierce rushing of the
eagles wings, each sage bird dashing
close to her head, SO that she saw the yeL
low of. their wrathful eyes. All at once
they quailed and were cowed. Yelling,
they flew off to the stump f an ash jut-
ting out of the cliff: a thousand feet above
the cataract; and the Christian mother,
falling across the eyrie, in the midst of
bones and blood, clasped her child dead
dead, no doubt, but unchanged and un-
torn, and swaddled up just as it was when
she laid it down asleep among the fresh
hay in q nook of the harvest field. Oh!
what pang of perfect blessedness trans
fixed her heart from that faint, feeble cry
at livesi it lives! it lives!" And bar
ing her bosom with loud laughter, and
eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the
innocent once more murmuring at the
fount of life and love.
"Ohi thou great and thou dreadful God,
whittier has Thou brought me? OH save
me, lest perish, even for thy own names
sake! Oh, Thou who died to save sinners,
have mercy upon me-"
Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the
skeletons of old trees-far, far dOwn-and
dwindled into specks athousand creatures
of her own kind, stationery, or running TO
and fro! Was that the sound of water
fall, or the faint roar of voices. Is that
her native strath and that tuft of trees
| does it contain the hur in which stands
rocked by her foot! Here must she die,
and when her breast il exhausted-hcr
babby too. And those horrid beaks, and
eyer, and talons, and wings will return and
her child will be devoured at last, even
within the arms that can protect 1t no
more!
Where, all this while, was Mark Stuart,
the sailor Half way up the cliffs. But
his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy,
and his heart sick; and he who had often
reefed the topgallant sail when at mid
afar, covered his face with his hands, and
dared look no longer on the swimming
nights.
And who will take care of my poor
bedridden mother" thought Hannah, who,
through exhaustion Of so many passions,
could no more retain in her grasp the hope
she had clutched in despair. A voice
Whispered sGod." She looked round ex.
pecting to see spirit; but nothing moved
except q rotten branch, that under its own
weight broke off from the crumbling
rock. Her eye-by some secret sympathy
with the inanimate object-watched its
fall; and II seemed to stop not far OF on
small platform. Her child bounded upon
her shculders-she knew not how or when
but 1t was safe-and scarcely daring 10
open her eyes she slid down the shelving
rocks and found herself on u small piece
of firm roOtbound soil, with the tops OF
bushes appearing below.
With fingers suddenly strengthened into
the power OF iron, she swung herself down
by brier and broom. and heather. and
dwarf-birch. Here loosened stone leapt
over q hedge, and no sound was heard, Sc
profound was its fall. There, the shingle
ratified down the screes, and she hesitated
not to follow. Her feet bounded against
the huge stone that stopped them; but she
felt no pain. Her body was callous as the
lcliff. Steep as the wall of o house was
now the side of the precipice. But it was
matted with ivy, centuries old-long age
dead, and without a single green leaf
but with thousands of arm-thick stems
petrified into the rock, and covering it as
with q trellis. She felt her baby on hel
neck, aud with hlhands and Meet clung tc
that fearful ladder.
Tuning round her head and looking
down, she saw the whole population of the
parish-so great was the multitude-or
their knees. She heard the voice of psalm.
Ia hymn breathing the spirit of one united