The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1903-09-18

III llS cIlDV6S6Ty NEGLIGENT Oh tue1f lS9UI
rel returned with a significance magnt
fed thousandfold by her fears.
Il called him worthless and drunken
she said, with dry eyes and pale, tremb-
ling lips, tand he IL neither. Poor Tcmi
Though he Goes drink sometimes, it is
through encouragement and disappoint-
meRt at his hard lot, and he is always
kind to me. Oh, God, if / could recall
my words! But is it too late? l may
save hiIa yeti"
The Curtis Lumber company's mills
stood on the level bottom adjacent 10 the
river and about 100 yards from it. Hall
mile above the mills the railroad
crossed the river over long iron bridge,
and from point Just below the southern
end of the bridge an artificial ditch had
been cut to float the logs into the mill
at high water 1t was this bridge and
the ditch that were responsible for the
trouble which now prevailed.
Au Sable river was rearing, booming
yellow flood. All Gay the great sawlogs,
I broken from their moorings above, had
been rushing by in thousands. But now
immense pine trees, torn up by their
roots, were borne upon the bosom CT the
raging torrent. One of these monarchs
of the forest had caught between the two
middle piers of the bridge, and formed
the nucleus of a rapidly CROWNS mass of
timber and debris, the long stems of the
great pines writhing and rolling together
like the hideous forms of gigantic SER
penis. Not only was the bridge threat
oppd with roo1pcptorv destination hut
the dam thus formed caught the waters
up and hurled them and their ponderous
armature down the ditch and against the
mills below, with a violence that must
soon accomplish their destruction.
To get at the pine trunk and cut II
would release the straining, tumbline
mass, restore the raging waters TO their
natural channel, and save the bridge and
the mills. But woe to him who cut IT.
When Tom Harding, AK in hand.
stepped upon the bridge and started on
his mission, not one of the group who
stood looking on in breathless silence
but felt that he was witnessing a ira
gedy.
''The man is committing sheer. down.
right suicide" said an old lumberman
who had spent his life in the forest and
on the river 1T oughtn't to be allowed"
But Tom had already reached the mid
die of the long structure. and was feelirg
his way down over the tumbling, grind
ing pile as only lumberman can. Now
he stood with careful footing upon the
huge pine stem, bending under the awful
strain, and now he piled his AK with tell
ing vigor, making the chips fly at each
powerful stroke. To an eye not cogni-
zant of his terrible danger the sturdy
lumberman might have been following
his daily vocation for anything in his
look or manner that denoted the con-
trary.
But the woman. wild-eyed and pant
ing, with hair disheveled and hanging in
rain-soaked tresses down her back, who
just now joined the group on the bank,
realized his danger, and a piercin g shrek
mingled with the roar of the waters.
ooh, Tom, dear Tom, come back to me!
Forgive my cruel words, and come back
for baby's sake and mine!" and she
held the little, wet, shiverirg thing up
In full view of its parent out on the river.
He heard not her words, but he saw
his child, and every feeling vanished be-
fore the paterna1. He turned and lool,ed
at the towering mass above him, and for
a moment those on shore hoped he might
escape. But the next! A terrible grind
ing crash as the great tree parted, an
awful. muffled roar, ard for single in
slant the lumberman's form stood poised
on the broken tree He kissed his hand
| once, and above the DIN came the words,
ct was for you Maggie; you and the
| baby" and then he went down, and was
borne away by the rushing swirl of We
tiers.
Half an hour later searchers found a
limp. uncon sciOus body suspended to the
branches of a tree where it had been left
| by the now receding waters. 1t was at
| first thought that the man was dead. but
closer examination revealed the fact that
he breathed. and liberal draught from a
| lumberman's flask forced down his
throat partly restored him TO conscious
| ness. That night Tom Harding was car
| ried home to his wife. terribly main ed
and bruised. it is true. but still alive
Under her tender and happy ministra-
| lions he f1Dallv recovered and from his
| terrible experience he cleaned lesson
| that will last him all his life To-day not
| a happier trio lives than Tom and Mar
garet and their baby-Farm and Fire
| side.
CAUSE OF KENTUCKY FEUDS.
President of Berea College, in a Re-