Occasionally, go die a roof!



was one of the abodes in which
these firebrands fell.

One night Josephine was awakened by the blinding light of the flames,
which had already penetrated to her chamber. With a shriek of terror,
she sprang from her bed, caught up little Hortense in her arms from the
couch where the child lay quietly slumbering, wrapped her in the
bedclothes, and rushed, in her night-attire, from the house. She burst,
with the lion-like courage of a mother, through the shouting, fighting
crowds of soldiers and blacks outside, and fled, with all the speed of
mortal terror, toward the harbor. There lay a French vessel, just ready
to weigh anchor. An officer, who at that moment was stepping into the
small boat that was to convey him to the departing ship, saw this young
woman, as, holding her child tightly to her bosom, she sank down, with
one last despairing cry, half inanimate, upon the beach. Filled with the
deepest compassion, he hastened to her, and, raising both mother and
child in his arms, he bore them to his boat, which then instantly put
out from land, and bounded away over the billows with its lovely burden.

The ship was soon reached, and Josephine, still tightly clasping her
child to her breast, and happy in having saved this only jewel, climbed
up the unsteady ladder to the ship's decks. Until this moment all her
thoughts remained concentrated upon her child, and it was only when she
had seen her little Hortense safely put to bed in the cabin and free
from all danger--only after she had fulfilled all the duties of a
mother, that the woman revived in her breast, and she cast shamed and
frightened glances around her. Only half-clad, in light, fluttering
ni


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