Bennie’s mother fainted and was carried away. Other women, screamed and rushed about blindly. Bennie’s voice was getting fainter. Old men cried—men whose hearts had faced everything from the trials of the Civil War to modern troubles.
“Let me down again,” said the brave young rescuer, as he rubbed his face, as if to awaken to his undertaking.
Again his face disappeared, then his body, and then his feet. On and on he went down. Thirty-five feet of the grass rope had disappeared when the order to “pull” was heard far off. Anxiously, and with, less hope than before, the men pulled. The line was heavier as they pulled, foot after foot, above the surface.
The crying of a baby was heard down in the ground. The larger boy’s feet appeared at the top; then his body, and then his face.
Then—little Bennie, clasped by each wrist by a pair of muddy hands, appeared on earth again.
The women screamed and cried for the hundredth time that morning. The men, or rather, most of them, wept and then cheered. Now everybody cheered, and hundreds of voices let everybody within a block know that the romper-clad boy was in his mother’s arms. They also let those about know that Henry had emerged from beneath the house with eyes, hair, hands, and clothing covered with mud. They grabbed him; women kissed him, and men crowded about the boy.
“Haven’t got time to stop now,” said Henry. “Got to get back to the shop.” And he hurriedly washed the dirt from his face. But they wouldn’t let him go. They surged about the wondering lad and held him for a while, or at least until the praising crowds could press fifty dollars into his bread-earning little hands. Then he turned, jumped upon his bicycle, and rode speedily away, to deliver the clothes for the tailor, for the support of himself and his widowed mother.
Two Years on Their Honeymoon Walk.
Journeys across the continent twice on foot within a period of two years marked the unique honeymoon trip taken by Mr. and Mrs. John Broxman, of near Harris[{65}]burg, Pa., who arrived in Baltimore, Md., a few days ago, and who, for just two hours, were the guests of Mrs. C. C. Webber, wife of the pastor of the Emmanuel Evangelical Church, Greene Street, near Lombard.
In the twenty-four months that they have been away the young married couple have traversed the parched sands of the semitropical countries of the South, the fertile valleys of the Middle West, and the rugged mountain paths of the Far Western States. They are happy, and have returned to their homes without reporting a mishap.