held at bay by the faith that made
them obey the parson's command.

And then as I stood there with the mother of the child of my lover
cowering against my breast, with the man who in a few days was to have
been my husband, crouched under almost certain grinding death, and
looked into what at any moment might be the grave of all the babies of
the women I held dear, a light was flooding into my darkness and all of
the obscure, untranslatable writings on my nature became clear and I
received my consciousness of my Master, the Lord Jesus, with a cry that
I sent up for His mediation for the lives of the little ones. It was my
first prayer.

"O Christ in Heaven, help save them!" I pleaded. "Quick, Gregory,
quick!" I added another supplication in the next breath.

"Sue is bleeding, too!" again came a wail in Charlotte's voice. "Mikey's
got the baby, but he's caught."

Nell had been kneeling beside Mark's prostrate form, but at Charlotte's
call she laid his head on Harriet's breast and flung herself against my
arm outstretched to receive and restrain her.

"Now, Nickols, steady! I'll lift them past the beam," said the parson,
as he braced himself in the door space which had been crushed into a
narrow opening.

"Charlotte, take the baby from Mikey and hand her to me first," he
commanded. "Where are you caught, Mikey?"

"Me leg," wailed Mikey and his wail was echoed by poor little Mrs.
Burns.

"Here," said the parson, as he handed the brown swaddled bundle to Nell,
who caught it in her arms and sank shuddering to my feet.

"Now, Charlotte, I want you to get all the other children who are not
caught into line and make them walk carefully, just as you did here to
me," said the parson in a perfectly calm voice, the one he had used to
command his small congregation in the weeks of the drill.

"They are all crying and got their heads covered up," answered Charlotte
in despair. "They won't get up and march." Loud wails of fear and
anguish accompanied this statement, as if to corroborate it.

"Sing with me, Susan, sing the march," came the command without an
instant's delay from the lips of the beloved Minister.

"Onward, Christian soldiers
Marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus
Going on before--"

came wee Sue's high, sweet voice which rose from the cavern and joined
with the parson's in the old song that has led strong men through many a
death watch.

For a long moment we all waited and then o