Sharp County record., 1888-02-09
MAX'S SACRIFICE.
His Reward for Duty Faithfully
Performed.

Max Dwight was ready for his early
tramp to the upland lake, where, as
he knew, there was certain out-crop-
ping of roots suitable to the manu-
facture of some rustic benches he had
been promising to make for his wife.
Mistress Janet accompanied him to
the porch of their cottage, carrying
Tottie, who in her pink and white
prettiness of babyhood, was as like
the young mother as the wild roses
bud is like the wild rose.
"The rain must have been heavy
above here" remarked Mistress
Dwight noting the aspect OF the creek
in the Divide.
The stream, ordinarily tangled like
silver wire, among the powders and
bosky hollows at the base of the ridge,
was chatting in its bed the acceera-
ton of its current betrayed by mutlled
roar
'Yes, when the Otter's boosting
along like that, the pity is that the
mill stands still, and tho hands are
idle." complained Dwight
Don't fret, Max. I'd not get my
benches but for the mill machinery
being out of gear"
He laughed, kissed her and Trottie,
and n moment later was striding
down the path to the bridge, whose
arches connecting the jutting ridge on
which he lived with the further side of
the Otter. This stream, lower down,
did the work of an army of giants,
turning the wheels of the mills and
factories, in which hundreds of bread
winners daily toiled. Alluvial bot
toms, cultivated farms, village homes
of peace and plenty, and countless
other evidences of prosperity lay be-
hind Dwight when he had crossed the
bridge and turned into the path
leading upward to the lake plateau.
Always observant. he noticed that
the creek was steadily rising.
''The rain must have flushed the
lake considerably" he tho ought, stop
ping once to inspect tangled mat of
drift whirling past. "Bless me! if
that isn't lily-pad from the lakes
bed. However any thing but hurri-
cane" He stopped short.
A horrifying fear had throttled him
in the rugged path. The morning was
instinct with joyousness. To the ear
came the malin symphonies of nature;
to the eye her harmonies of light.
color, movement Overhead were
fockings of swelling cumuli white as
fresh washed sheep browsing in q
spacious pasturage of the myosotis
bloom.
Whence was the menace of evil?
Wrestling with the Shape in the
way as Christian wrestled with
Apollyon, Dwight saw, drifting by
another clump of lily-pads, tangled
with a vine full of foliage and bud
ding fruit.
'.It's branch of the wild-grape
that climbs the sycamore next the
lakes rim," came to him with the
force of assurance, and casting aside
his axe, he sped up the ascent he had
been leisurelY climbing.
Reaching the plateau, in the midst
of whose picturesqueness was en-
powered the lake, oyerhanging the
defle like Babylonish garden, he
saw, almost to his chagrin, its hun
dreds of millions of cubic feet of water
placidly smiling and dimpling in the
sunshine. The rain had not flushed il |
-fushedP The lake was lower than
Its lowest water-mark!
The fear he had shaken off leaped |
upon him and tore at his vitals again.
As his gaze darted along the embank-
ment to the cleft through which the
creek flowed, he saw that the stream
was not only momently eating its way
deeper into the rim, but that, here
and there, the embankment showed
fissures, indicating an extended dis
lodgment of the natural supports of
the lake basin. A practical engineer
himself, Dwight had always enter
tanned doubt of the stability of that
freak of nature-the disproportionate
fountain of Otter creek. Some day,
he had thought, the cray-fish, the
otter. the thawing and the freezing
would do their work, and then would
come the drainage of the great basin.
But not in his day! Oh, no! Not
when he had just builded home for
Janet and the black-ayed Tottie right
IN the shadow of the superintendent