s appalling, while on shore many people were killed
by the falling of trees, chimney-pots and tiles.

In Sutton, Lancashire, the gale raged with tremendous fury, and the
children in the local National School, frightened by the roaring and
shrieking of the wind, could pay little attention to their lessons.
Hannah Rosbotham, the assistant mistress, was in charge of the school,
the head mistress being absent through ill-health. She was very
popular among her pupils, and knew them all intimately, having herself
lived all her life in the village, and having been educated at the
school in which she was now a teacher. She calmed the more timid of
her pupils, and endeavoured to carry on the school as if nothing
unusual were happening outside.

While she was teaching the bigger children, the infants (little tots of
three and four) were sitting in the gallery at the further end of the
room in the care of a pupil teacher. Over this gallery was the belfry,
a large stone structure. It had weathered many a storm, but none had
equalled this gale. Suddenly about 11 o'clock Hannah Rosbotham was
startled by a loud rumbling, grinding noise, and almost at the same
moment a portion of the belfry crashed through the roof and fell in
pieces upon the poor little children in the gallery.

Immediately there was a stampede. The pupils and the pupil teachers
rushed terror-stricken into the wind-swept playground, every one
anxious for her own safety. But Hannah Rosbotham did not fly from the
danger; she thought only of the little children in the gallery. The
air was filled with dust, but she groped her way to the gallery
staircase, which was littered with stone, wood and slates. Hurrying up
she found, to her great joy, that many of the little ones had escaped
injury. Some were crying, but others sat silent and terror-stricken,
gazing at the spot where several of their little friends lay buried in
the ruins.

Having hurried out the children who had so wonderfully escaped injury,
she set to work to rescue those who lay injured. And the magnitude of
the task which lay before her may be realised from the fact that
sixteen-hundredweight of belfry-ruins had fallen through into the
gallery. Quickly and unaided Hannah Rosbotham tore away the timber,
stone and slate that were crushing the little sufferers, whose pale
faces and pleading voices filled her heart with anguish, but gave
strength to her arms. As she knelt tearing away with her ba