A   MYSTERIOUS VISITOR

I was not a disobedient child, at least I didn't mean to be. But I was nat­urally curious, and one day, that curiosity almost led me to disaster.

    Possible tragedy was prevented by what my family, friends and I have always felt was a visit from beyond. Someone or something was protecting me and left evidence of its presence."

      As I said, I was a curious child. Although my mother had told me to stay in our yard, one day at dusk I was fascinated by the noises coming from our neighbors' yard. They were obviously building something, but I was too small to look over our privet hedge to see what was going on.

   I found a space large enough to crawl through, and I slipped into the adjoining yard. 1 could see very little, as it was growing quite dark.  All at once, a few feet in front of me, stood a person I had never seen.

   He spoke quietly to me, saying, "Go home." I was puzzled about who he was, but before I could ask, he again spoke. "Go home," he said, this time quite firmly.  I quickly ran to the hole in the hedge and slipped back into our yard.

     Because I felt guilty for disobeying my mother, I told my folks what I had done and about my strange encounter.

            My parents got a flashlight and we went back over to the neighbors' yard. Just as we got there, our neighbors came hurrying from their garage with their arms full of boards. They explained that an old cistern had caved in and they were erecting a barricade.

We flashed the light around the dark hole, and there in the wet soil on the brink of the cistern were my footprints. One more step, and I would have gone down into the cold, deep water.

     Directly across from my small footprints, on the other side of the cistern, was another set of footprints. Only these were large and were the prints of bare feet! No adult in the yard had feet as large as the person who had made these prints, nor was anyone barefoot.

   No one fitting the description I was able to give had ever been seen in our neighborhood, nor was such a person ever seen again. So we all had great cause to wonder about this mysterious visitor who saved my life!

 -D. F., Indiana