Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-09-11

| most as one of the tribe. Then came
a famine such as the older chiefs had
never known before.
Many were the envious glances cast
| at Toms plump, sturdy little figure,
and his foster mother became more
watchfu1 than ever.
One night as he lay asleep she
touched him on the shoulder.
"Come,n she whispered, and as Tom
sprang lightly up she placed finger
to his lips. Then taking him by the
hand she led the way through the
bush.
Finally, when they were almost ex-
hausted by hunger and fatigue, the
slender wire of one of the telegraph
lines that stretch across the Austrail-
ian wilderness was seen on strong
ed trees.
The woman gave cry of delight.
In an indistinct way she knew what
the wire was. She had seen one once
before and had been told by her su-
perstitious chief that through it the
W01JO ulou UdlkoU Will U1OlA oOo.
She determined to try to talk with
white mans God herself-to try to
get. him to send after this little one
whom she loved SO well and for
whose safety from her hungry tribe
she had worked SO hard.
She FRUSTRATED herself before the
pole and prayed for the boys deliv-
erance all that day and most of the
night Then it occurred to her that
if she placed her lips close to the wire
ly hear and answer.
Before she began the climb up the
pole she fashioned a rude sling out Of
her skirt to hold her at the top while
she talked to God. With this in her
teeth she started. Higher and higher
up the bare pole she crawled, clutching
it desperately with arms and legs,
stopping every foot to rest, praying
all the time. Great splinters tore her
skin, and a little stream of blood from
her wounds ran down the pole. She
did not mind. Her only thought was
of her boy who had absorbed all her
wealth of mother love. At last, al
most fainting, she reached the top.
With one trembling hand she put the
sling over it SO that the bar holding
the wire would keep it from slipping.
Then, with head dropping and relax
ed mucles, she hung there for awhile,
too weak even to pray. When her
strength had partly returned, she be-
gan, and no prayer from the finest
carved pulpit ever was more fervent.
Noon came without any sign of res
cue from heaven or earth. Still she
chung there. The shadows began to
lengthen. Her limbs had stiffened
from her cramped position, and her
mind was crazed by exhaustion and
disappointment. Her prayers chang
ed to curses. The white mans God
scorned her and scorned her boy. She
grew frantic with wrath and pounded
the pole and wire with her fists as she
hurled anathemas at them and God.
Hanging by a string about her neck
was a boomerang of hardened wood.
With it she struck and shattered the
glass insulator. Then she pounded
the swaying wire. She twisted it and
bent it in her fingers. She bit it with
her teeth. Finally she broke it. Then
she slid to the ground and groveled
on the grass in an ecstasy Of grief
and anger at God and man.
She was recalled to her senses by a
piercing cry from Tom. His weari
ness had changed to the delirium of
! hunger fever. She gathered him,
struggling and screaming, in her arms
and held him until the paroxysm
passed. Then she made soft bed of
| leaves for him and searched for food.
She only found a few berries until
noon the next day, when greatly to
her delight she discoveded the nest of
some wild fowl with eggs in it. These
she forced Tom to suck. She ate
nothing herself. What Tom rejected
went untouched. She thought only
of him.
For three days this went on. She
was getting constantly weaker. When
the morning Of the fourth day broke,
she could only crawl on hands and
knees in her search for berries. That
day hnemen sent from the nearest
telegraph station, many miles away,
to find and repair the break in the
wire found them-black woman and
white child-lying at the foot OF the
pole.
They gave them food and heard the
woman's story. Touched by it, they