rible that we could
scarce look upon it. The most savage heart could not have witnessed the
spectacle unmoved. He had a large hole in his head; his body from head to
foot was covered with scars and filled with worms! The sight inspired us
with so much horror that even at the moment of writing this article we
shudder from its effects. Those who have seen the others represent them to
be in a similar condition." One after another, seven dark human forms were
brought forth, gaunt and wild-eyed with famine and loaded with irons,
having been found chained and tied in attitudes in which they had been
kept so long that they were crippled for life.

It must have been in the first rush of the inside throng to follow these
sufferers into the open air and sunlight that the quick-witted Madame
Lalaurie clapped to the doors of her house with only herself and her
daughters--possibly the coachman also--inside, and nothing but locks and
bars to defend her from the rage of the populace. The streets under her
windows--Royal street here, Hospital yonder--and the yard were thronged.
Something by and by put some one in mind to look for buried bodies. There
had been nine slaves besides the coachman; where were the other two? A
little digging brought their skeletons to light--an adult's out of the
soil, and the little child's out of the "condemned well"; there they lay.
But the living seven--the indiscreet crowd brought them food and drink in
fatal abundance, and before the day was done two more were dead. The
others were tenderly carried--shall we say it?--to prison;--to the
calaboose. Thither "at least two thousand people" flocked that day to see,
if they might, these wretched sufferers.

A quiet fell upon the scene of the morning's fire. The household and its
near friends busied themselves in getting back the jewelry, plate,
furniture, and the like, the idle crowd looking on in apathy and
trusting, it may be, to see arrests made. But the restoration was finished
and the house remained close barred; no arrest was made. As for Dr.
Lalaurie, he does not appear in this scene. Then the crowd, along in the
afternoon, began to grow again; then to show anger and by and by to hoot
and groan, and cry for satisfaction.

IV.

The Lady's Flight.

The old Bayou Road saw a strange sight that afternoon. Down at its farther
end lay a little settlement of fishermen and Spanish moss gatherers,
pot-hunters, and shrimpers, around a custom-house station