The Heart's Kingdom

"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 out of the hole in the mass of

stones and timbers and bricks, led by wee bleeding Susan, crawled a slow

stream of bloody, bruised, sobbing infant humanity to be absorbed with

cries of rapture into waiting arms.

"Hurry, Goodloe, get the boy and Charlotte; my God, hurry, the beam is

sinking!" came in Nickols' smothered voice.

Martha started, but I held her tight against my breast.

"I've got Mikey's pants loose with my teeth," came in Charlotte's voice,

as a creaking of the timbers made a shudder run through the waiting

crowd as every man and woman who held a restored treasure close, waited

to see what would happen to the three left in the settling ruins.

"Come out, Mikey, come out," called the Burns paternal parent.

"I won't! I'm going to help Charlotte git out Stray," was the undutiful

response of courage to the craven.