Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 May 1891 — The Flying Courier. [ARTICLE]

The Flying Courier.

ICaclay’a “Tale ot Old Japan. At dawn a swift-footed courier stands beside the western gateway of Yeddo Castle patiently waiting for the delivery of the dispatches he is to forward to the next station. Suddenly a breathless messenger rushes up with a dispatch-box for the Commandant of the Kioto Shiro. Swiftly the lithe, bronze-colored runner gives his receipt and makes his simple preparations for starting. Then away goes the box like a hunted deer from station to station, util it reaches the distant mount-

ains. As it is borne deeper intot.hos* mighty ranges its progress becomes much slower, for it finds the streams swollen by the melting snows. Bul onward speeds the box. At one oi two other points on its way througl the mountains it is delayed in its course for a few hours, so that the dispatch is fully three days behind time when its bearer finally leaps forth from the gorges of Sninano and speeds toward the hill country. Toward evening a fresh courier seizes toe box, and plunges into a ravine among the hills. With bated breath and bowed head he rushes along asif he were some express train behind time. His glistening body, gleams through the trees as he speeds by eop6e and thicket. Now he has reached the base of the range, and is slowly climbing the steep road that climbs up. through the woods. He has reached the summit, and is starting off on another burst of speed, when suddenly he utters a wild screech of pain and terror, and tumbles down in a heap in the middle of the road—ham-strung in both legs. * The next.instant bis head rolls into' the dust, and the body, that but a moment before had been bounding! along with the grace and the buoy-1 ancy of a gazelle, now lies twitching and floundering convulsively on the groundl.

The bloody deed was perpetrated by a band of romins, who had sprung from a neighboring thicket with the swiftness and the fury of the maneating tiger. - As they wash their swords in a spring that babies along the roadside, they glance up and down the road to make sure that nobody is in sight; drag the body far into the thicket; sprinkle sand over the bloody traces along the road; then seize the dispatch box and bound into the woods.