The strength of nerve and fortitude which maternal love will inspire, is
brilliantly illustrated by the story of an adventure with an American lion
which happened not long since in the remote territory of Wyoming.

A Mrs. Vredenbergh one night, during the absence of her husband, had
retired with her three children, to rest, in a chamber, on the first floor
of the cabin where she lived, when an enormous mountain-lion leaped into
the room through an open window placed at some distance from the ground for
purposes of ventilation. The brute after entering the apartment whined and
shook itself, and then lay down upon the floor in a watchful attitude with
its eyes fixed upon the bed where lay Mrs. V., almost paralyzed with fright
at this dangerous visitor. Her children were her first thought. Two of them
were in a cot beyond the bed, where she lay; the third, an infant of six
months, was reposing in its mother's arms.

Mrs. Vredenbergh remembered in an instant that perfect silence and
stillness might prevent the brute from springing upon them; and accordingly
she suppressed every breath and motion on her own part, while her children
luckily were sleeping so profoundly that their breathing could not be
heard. After a few minutes the monster began to relax the steady glare of
his great green orbs, and winked lazily, purring loudly as though in good
humor. The first powerful impulse to scream and fly to the adjoining
apartment having been repressed, the matron's heart became calmer and her
mind employed itself in devising a thousand plans for saving herself and
her children. Her husband's gun hung loaded above the head of the bed, but
it could not be reached without rising; if she woke her children she feared
her action in so doing or the noise they would make would bring the monster
upon them. She had heard that the mountain-lion could not attack human
beings when his hunger had been appeased, and from a noise she had heard in
the cow-house just after retiring, she surmised that the brute had made a