hrew the
sashes open, and looked into storm and darkness; yet the lightning
showed her a driving current of water combed by pickets of the garden
fence. It washed over the log steps, down which some of her father's
slaves were plunging from their doors, to recoil and scramble and mix
their despairing cries with the wakening clamor of bells.

Their master shouted encouragement to them from the back gallery.
Angelique's candles were blown out by the wind when she and Peggy tried
to hold them for her father. The terrified maid crouched down in a
helpless bunch on the hall floor, and Madame Saucier herself brought the
lantern from the attic. The perforated tin beacon, spreading its bits of
light like a circular shower of silver on the gallery floor, was held
high for the struggling slaves. Heads as grotesque as the waterspouts on
old cathedrals craned through the darkness and up to the gallery posts.
The men breasted the deepening water first, and howling little blacks
rode on their fathers' shoulders. Captain Saucier pulled the trembling
creatures in, standing waist-deep at the foot of the steps. The
shrieking women balanced light bundles of dry clothes on their heads,
and the cook brought useless kettles and pans, not realizing that all
the food of the house was lost in a water-filled cellar.

The entire white-eyed colony were landed, but scarcely before it was
time to close the doors of the ark. A far-off roar and a swell like that
of the ocean came across the submerged country. No slave had a chance to
stand whimpering and dripping in the hall. Captain Saucier put up the
bars, and started a black line of men and women, with pieces of
furniture, loads of clothing and linen, bedding and pewter and silver,
and precious baskets of china, or tiers of books, upon their heads, up
the attic stairs. Angelique's harp went up between two stout fellows,
tingling with little sighs as they bumped it on the steps.
Tante-gra'mere's room was invaded, and her treasures were transferred
before she had a chance to prohibit it. The children were taken from
their beds by the nurse, and carried to beds made for them in the
attic, where they gazed awhile at their rude dark canopy of rafters, and
fell asleep again in luxury, sure of protection, and expecting much of
such novel times.

The attic, like the house under it, had dignity of space, in which
another large family might have found shelter. Over rawhide trunks and
the disused cradle an