She looked upon her sickly boy, and thought of the night he was born. Why does she start and turn round? Did some one pull her by the hair? No, it was only fancy. A sort of magnetic influence, linked with thought. That twinge decided her. That twinge decided his fate, and saved her children's lives. She went home with them, and tired nature slept in spite of mental agony. At four o'clock the bells rung for fire; it was long before she could wake sufficiently to count the eight strokes which told it was in her district. Dreamily unconscious of danger, she moves not till she hears a crash and sees a light through the small rear window, when she springs up, opens the door, looks out in the direction of the stairs, and meets a burst of flame and smoke coming up. Back, back to the bed, closing the door--a thin pine door--the only barrier between the fire and her sleeping babes, she drags them out and up to the window. Will she throw them down upon the pavement below, as the only hope of saving their lives, for the fire is fairly up the stairs and rattling at the door behind her? If it enters all is lost. The window is opened, and the little boy first--he is the darling--poised upon the sill, in the bewildered amazement of half-awaking consciousness. "Oh mother, mother, don't throw me out! I will be a good boy, mother. I never will tear my jacket again. Indeed I could not help it. It was a big boy that pulled me. Oh, mother, mother, don't, pray don't." He screams with fear, as he hangs convulsively upon his mother's neck, and looks down upon the gathering crowd, crying, "Throw him out, throw him out; we will catch him." And a hundred hands are outstretched, a hundred noble hearts would prostrate themselves upon the pavement to save, to break the fall of a beggar boy whom they would have kicked out of their path the day before. Now a mother appeals to her fellow men to save her child. She had oft appealed before, but then the house was not on fire; the fire was in his father's mouth--and that they heeded not. No bells rung, to call the engines with copious streams of water to put it out--they are ringing now. And now see the outstretched hands, each ready to risk its own life to save that of a child. [Illustration: THE NEW-YORK FIREMAN.--_Page 30._] "Let him go--throw him out--you will all burn up in five minutes more--this old wooden house burns like tinder." She looks behind her; the flame is sending serpent tongues under the door. Her dress upon a chair is on fire--now the bed. They must jump, naked too, down among those men, or die. "Hold on! hold on! Way there--give way there. Hurrah, men! lively now!"