Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-05-23
A Mothers Daring.


The great Golden Eagle, the pride
and the fear of the parish, swooped
down and away with something in his
talons. One single, sudden female
Strickland then shouts and out-cries,
as if church spire had tumbled down
on congregation at sacrament.
Hannah Lamond's BARN Hannah
Lamonds BARN p was the loud fast
spreading cry. "The eagles taen aft
Hannah Lamond's BARN - and many
hundred feet were in another instant
hurrying toward the mountain.
Two miles of hill and dale, and copse
and single, and many intersecting
brooks lay between but in an incredi-
BILE short time the foot of the mountain
was alive with people. The eyre was
we'll known, and both old birds were
visible on the rock edge. But who
shall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark
Stuart, the sailor, who had been at the
storming OF many fort. once attempted
in vain? All kept gazing, or weeping,
or wringing OF hands, rooted to the
ground, or running back and forward
like SO many ants essaying their new
wings in discontinue.
What's the use-what's the use o
any puir human means? We have nae
power but in prayer ~ And many
knelt down-fathers and mothers think
ing of their own babies-as If they
would force the deuf heavens to hear.
Hannah I4amond had all this while
been sitting on stone with face per-
fectly white, end eyes like those of q
mad person, fixed on the eyrie. Nobody
noticed her; for strong as all sympa-
thies 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 baptized in the name of the
Father, and the Son. and the Holy
Ghost!
And on uttering these words, she few
off through the brakes and over the
huge stones, up-up-up-faster than
ever huntsman ran to the death-fear.
less as goat playing among the preci-
pices. 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 dreams, climb
the walls of old ruins and found foot
ing, even in decrepitude, along the
edge of unguarded battlements, and
down dilapidated staircases, deep as
draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned
with open, fixed, Snd unseeing eyes,
unframed, to their beds at midnight +?
It is all the work of the soul, to whom
the body is slave and shall not the
agony of mothers passion-who sees
her baby, whose warm mouth has lust
left her breast, hurried off by q demon
to 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 de.
liverance.
No stop-no stay she knew not that
she drew her breath. Beneath her feet
Providence fastened every root. How
was she ever to descend? That fear,
then, but once crossed her heart, as ur
-up-up to the little image made Of
her own flesh and blood.
1.-The God who holds me up now
from perishing--will not the same God
save me when my child is at nv
breast?"
Down came the fierce rushing of the
eagles wings, each savage bird dashinp
close to her head, so that she saw the
yellow of their wrathfuI eyes. All al
once they quailed and were cowed,
Yelling they flew off to the stump of an
ash jutting out OF the cliff, a thousand
feet above the cataract and the Chris.
tian mother, falling across the eyre,
in the midst of bones and blood, clasped
her child, dead-dead, no doubt, but
unmangled and untorn, and swaddled
up just as it WAS when she laid it down
asleep among the fresh hay in nook
OF the harvest field. Oh! what pang
of perfect blessedness transfxed her
heart from that faint, feeble cry" II
lives it lives it lives I" And barring
her bosom with loud laughter, and eyes
dry as stones, she felt tue lips of the
unconscious innocent once more muir.
muring at the fount of life and love.
"Oh !! thou great and thou dreadful
God, whittier hast Thou brought me
Oh save me lest I perish, even for thy
own names sake Oh, Thou who died
to save sinners, have mercy on me /"
Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stones, and
the skeletons of old trees-far, far down
and dwindled into specks thousand
creatures of her own kind, stationary,
or running to and fro Was that the
sound of the waterfall, or the faint roar
of voices? Is that her native strath ?
and that tuft OF trees-does it contain
the hut in which stands the cradle of
her child? Never more shall it be
rocked by her foot Here must she die,