After searching a week for two small boys who were missing from their homes during that time, the searchers found the body of William Hale, five years old, and his companion, Albert Tomlinson, aged ten, still alive, in an abandoned mine near Banksville, Pa. The boys had been lost in the mine all that time. Young Tomlinson was almost exhausted from exposure and hunger.
The boys were in a small five-foot drop in a mine pit which had several inches of water in it. The body of the Hale boy was partly submerged in the water, but his head was resting in the lap of his companion, who could barely sit erect. The younger boy had starved to death.
After searching for several days for the missing lads, the party entered the mine pit. They had progressed only a short distance when they heard a faint voice crying: “Oh, Thomas; oh, Thomas!” It was young Tomlinson calling for his older brother.
When rescued, young Tomlinson said: “Thank God you found us.”
Tomlinson told an incoherent story. He said he had no idea of time, but as nearly as he could tell Hale had been dead about two days. He said they walked hand in hand many miles, endeavoring to find a way out. After his comrade died, Tomlinson said, he carried the body around with him. Overcome with exhaustion, he gave up all efforts and had not sufficient strength to get out of the pool of poisonous water in which he and Hale’s body was found.
It is not known how the Tomlinson boy survived the ordeal, but it is supposed that he subsisted on bark from old timber in the mine. He is in a hospital now.
Catches Baby Boy on Roof of Moving Train.
An escape from death without precedent occurred in Pittsburgh, recently, on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Walter Betle, four years old, was playing on the bridge at Thirty-third Street, near where the flooring was being repaired. He stumbled at a hole and started to fall to the tracks, twenty-five feet below.
A freight train was within a few feet of the bridge, running at high speed. On the roof of the first box car was Richard Roundtree, a brakeman, saw the boy stumble through the bridge. He braced himself and managed to catch him as he fell. Roundtree staggered dangerously near the edge of the roof, but managed to keep his footing until the train was stopped.