“How is Father?” cried Pierrette.  It was always the first question when they saw her.

“Better,” answered her Mother. " In another week or two the doctor thinks he can be moved.”

She was about to enter the shop to speak to Madame Coudert, when the air was suddenly rent by a fearful roar of sound.  She clasped her children in her arms.  “It’s like thunder,” she said, patting them soothingly; “if you hear the roar you know at once that you aren’t killed.  Come, we must hurry to the cellar.”  But before she could take a single step in that direction there was another terrible explosion.

“Look, oh look!” screamed Pierre, pointing to the Cathedral towers, which were visible from where they stood; “they are shelling the Cathedral!”

For an instant they stood as if rooted to the spot.  Was it possible the Germans would shell the place where their own wounded lay—­a place protected by the cross?  They saw the scaffolding about one of the towers burst suddenly into flames.  In another moment the fire had caught and devoured the Red Cross flag itself and then sprang like a thing possessed to the roof.  An instant more, and that too was burning.

“Father!” screamed Pierre, and before any one could stop him or even say a word, the boy was far up the street, running like a deer toward the Cathedral.  Pierrette was but a few steps behind him.

When she saw her children rushing madly into such danger, Mother Meraut’s exhausted body gave way beneath the demands of her spirit.  If Madame Coudert had not caught her, she would have sunk down upon the step.  It was only for an instant, but in that instant the children had passed out of sight.  Not stopping even to close her door, Madame Coudert seized Mother Meraut’s hand, and together the two women ran after them.  But they could not hope to rival the speed of fleet young feet, and when they reached the Cathedral square the flames were already roaring upward into the very sky.  The streets were crowded by this time, and their best speed brought them to the square ten minutes after the children had reached the burning Cathedral, and, heedless of danger, had dashed in and to the corner where their helpless Father lay.

The place was swarming with doctors and nurses working frantically to move the wounded.  The Abbe’ was there, and the Archbishop also.  Already the straw had caught fire in several places from falling brands.  “Out through the north transept,” shouted the Abbe.

Pierre and Pierrette knew well what they had come to do.  For them there was but one person in the Cathedral, and that person was their Father.  They had but one purpose—­to get him out.  Young as they were, they were already well used to danger, and it scarcely occurred to them that they were risking their lives.  Certainly they were not afraid.  When they reached their Father’s side, they found him vainly struggling to rise.

“Here we are, Father,” shouted Pierre:  “Lean on us!” He flew to one side; Pierrette was already struggling to lift him on the other.  As his bed was the one farthest from the spot where the fire first appeared, the doctors and nurses had sought to rescue those in greatest danger, and so the children for the time being were alone in their effort to save him.