My boy expressed a fear to go up on to the attic one day recently, and when I asked him what he found to fear up in a dusty old garret, he said there was so much old stuff up there that belonged to people who were dead, and if these old things had memories they must surely be thinking of the old days and the old friends, and had no welcome for the boys of the present generation.
Well, wife and I know the old garret has many memories, or at least articles that suggest old memories, and we seldom make a trip to the old store house of family heirlooms without coming away with a queer feeling of loneliness tugging at our hearts. No doubt the boy has often detected the subdued and solemn expression on our sobered faces; and learned his lesson of awe and veneration from reading the lines and shadows he has so often seen there.
The last time we were up on the garret, the three of us, we set about digging up old memories, because a lady’s side saddle hanging to a rafter started us to digging up some old family lore. The saddle belonged to wife’s great-grandmother, and is almost a century old. It was on this saddle her great-grandmother made the ride of nine miles through the dark to warn her father that burglars were trying to break into their house.
It seems her father sold some cattle and hogs a few days previously and had the money locked up in the bureau of his room. It was for this reason that the daughter and the hired girl were told to take the twins, and the four of them sleep in this particular room every night, while the parents attended camp meeting. Some great revivalist on the style of Peter Cartright was stirring up the people and everybody for miles around flocked to the camp meeting and pitched their tents and were prepared to spend several days on the camp ground.
There were several bad characters in the neighborhood and they knew the old squire had money in the house because he hadn’t been to town since selling the cattle and would hardly carry it with him to camp meeting. On the second night after the squire and his wife had left home three men broke through a kitchen window and began a search of the first floor rooms, knowing the hired man and the boys slept up stairs.
When they discovered that some one inside the squire’s room was holding the bolt in place they threatened to kill everybody inside the room if they didn’t let them in. The twins (girls of six) screamed aloud on hearing this threat, and their older sister called to the hired man up stairs to come to their assistance. But no answer came from the upper precincts. The hired man and the boys were too much scared to even make any reply.
Then it was that the sister unbolted the window and crawled through and dropped to the ground, ran quietly to the stable and saddled her horse, with this very saddle, and rushed off to the distant camp ground through a darkness that would frighten women of less nerve. Almost breathless she reached the camp meeting just when the shouting hilarity was the highest, and was told that her father was at the altar seeking salvation.
Without stopping to ask permission of anybody she walked swiftly up the aisle to where her father was kneeling, recognizing him by the green coat he wore, stooped and whispered in his ear: “Come home, father, at once; there are burglars trying to break into the house!”
“Hell!” he exclaimed loud enough to be heard by the mourner on either side of him, and said no more until he had saddled his own horse just back of the camp ground, and the two galloped back home in time to prevent the robbery. The burglars had taken their own good time to cut a hole through the door, through which they could reach a hand and pull back the wooden bolt; but the brave hired girl had stabbed the hand with a pair of scissors every time it was thrust through, and thus protected the house until the arrival of the squire and his fearless daughter.
The burglar on watch outside the house heard the approaching horses, and warning his two pals inside, they all escaped. Next day the burglar with the scissors wounds on his hands was arrested, and finally confessed and gave the names of his pals, and the trio served two years in prison.