A PANTHER CHILD STEALER.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 448, 20 November 1875, Page 2

A PANTHER CHILD STEALER.

The Houston Telegraph gives the following : —"Last Monday morning a man and wife, who live about nine miles east of Willis, left home on business, leaving their house in charge of their eldest child, about twelve years of age. Towards noon the girl heard the infant, aged fourteen months, which had been laid while asleep on a bed in an adjoining room, utter a horrid screech, upon which she immediately ran to its relief, and imagine her feelings upon opening the door to see a huge panther with the babe in its mouth leaping from an open window, immediately over the bed. But she, like a true heroine, sprang upon the bed and then out of the window, screaming at the height of her voice, and, upon being joined by the other children about the house, pursued the

panther at her utmost speed. They followed about forty rods, to a pair of bars that separated the clearing from the forest, at which place the girl states that she ap* proached to within lifteen or twenty feet of the panther, when it relinquished its hold of the child, leaped the bars and made its way to the woods. The infant was picked up, much strangled from its rapid movements through the grass and sand, which had filled its mouth and eyes, but soon recovered and is now well, save a few scratches about its body, which have the appearance of having been made by the panther's teeth. These marks are very plain, and there are several blood blisters where the teeth in slipping came in contact. The girl states the panther dropped the child once before arriving at the fence, and it is supposed the giving away of the clothing was the cause, as it much much torn."