The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-12-22
TWICE LOST AT SEA
By MAIA PETTUS, Athens, Ala.


 full mother. are twelve down there by | the sea; this home is Atoo, large and lonely just for mo; let's have them up here; and you be our teacher, and let us learn together, for we are broth CTS"
 Again his wish gained ready assent, and hand in hand. the woman and the child went down to the shore, followed | by the baby in the arms of Jansen's wife. Again. a strange thing hap | pened. for the child, springing ahead | of the woman. stumbled forward, and | as he fell face downward. a great | wave rushed inland, covering the sweet eyes and the faxen curls, in- undating the 1.-the little foun--and then receding. the wave bore the little body far out to sea. The baby. leap- ing from the nurses arms, sped after the retreating lorna wrath above the waters the baby turned back, and with mocking air called out:
 'I am thy lost youth. Where now are thy opportunities" In cold chill, the woman woke from her troubled dream. The fire had burned tow. Outside was inky dark ness. She was not much longer alone, for the door opened to admit old Jan- | sen. and she looked up expectantly, halfway believing that she would see | him accompanied by his wife and the | dream children. In hurried curtsy, snatching his wet cap from his head. he came up to the fire, and stood there shaking off the drops of water like a | great shaggy dog. Something un- usual had moved him. The woman waited silently even after his telling her that the steamer sighted early in | the afternoon, had foundered on the reefs. and all on board gone down. Tt was little boy he said finally. | stea dyinR his uoicq with great aff0rf | ''as was the last to be seen. Outlined l sharply by swift lightning flash, we saw him standing higlIs above every thing, before the waves swallowed them all. And 1t seemed as If he was point ing his finger up there to the cliff, where your husband, in his lifetime, used always to keep the beacon light burning"
 Tt must be kept burning after this," said the woman.
 There's been nothing tossed up by the waves" said Jansens wife, coming in and shivering with cold, 'the under tow Is too strong, but I thought once. the baby saw in it's mothers arms, might come ashore. Be glad you didn't see 'em." she said to the woman.
 Talking together in awed tones, the man and his wife left the room. Jan- sen came back to draw much be- thumbed letter from a dry inner pocket and offer 1t to the woman with ex- planation and apology. It had been brought from the post at the distant village by one of the passing fisher men. Jansen seemed relieved of a bur den when he saw the letter safe In the woman's hands--for when, had ever a letter come to that home before?
 With strange calm. the woman open ed and read the letter.t It was as if she already knew tho contents. Yet who could have foreseen the coming of I ,... at tph hos Not less unexpected was the signature almost the name of her girlhood rival had been forgotten in the sorrow of multiplied years. Yet. to learn at this late hour that all this endless woe was brought about by the voluntary act of this old time enemy renewed the shock of her grief.
 The unhappy rival, seeing the woman welded to the longed for lover, sought revenge; but no opportunity had come, till tho day the opportunity offered Of Kidnapping the child. The woman's son secured, the girl had then made her way to the harbor. at which passing steamers sometimes touched. and had sailed away from the island leaving no trace of her crime.
 In her new home, she had found an undeserved happiness, becor 'ns the wife of good man, and in deep pent- tence she had cared for the stolen boy as if for her own brother. The coming of her little baby girl renewed her ever present desire to restore the son to his mother. Since her husbands death she had yielded to her homesick long ing to return to the island-and with the children she would sail on the steamer due to touch at the island , port on November II.
 , Will dull upnseeing eyes, the woman 1 looked up from her reading. The sub , dued voices of Jansen and his wife , reached her. Indistinctly she caught the murmur.
 "Yes today is the fourteenth of No. vember"
 With a stified cry. the woman's head , fell forward, but with mighty effort, she maintained her calm, and rising, staggered to her desk. They found her , there the unblotted paper still beneath her cold hand; the smile of the bride of eighteen years upon her waxen cheeks and colorless lips.
 When the priest, summoned by Jan- sen, entered that chamber of death, he found the woman's last act had been to write her will. An annual stipend was left to Jansen to keep perpetually burning the beacon light upon the face of the cliff. All the remaining reve- nue of tbe vast estate was to he df- vided between the church. and the , founding and endowment of a school for the children of the fisherfolk. After all not in vain had been, the passing of the little life twice lost at-sea.