My mother heard the shrieks from the distant “chamber” on the ground floor, and, without arousing the sleeping patient, slipped noiselessly from the room and ran with all her might toward the stairs. Half-way up she met a child wrapped in flames, which she was beating with her poor little hands while she shrieked for help. My mother flashed by her, escaping harm on the narrow stairway as by a miracle. One glance into her own room showed her that her girls were safe; she tore a blanket from the bed and was back so quickly that she overtook the burning figure on the lowermost stair, and wrapped her in the blanket. Captain Bragg appeared below at the same instant, wound the cover about the frantic, struggling creature, and extinguished the fire. Little Lucy died that night. Her mother and the baby followed her to the grave in a week. The tragedy broke up the Bragg household, and we found a temporary home in the family of Mr. Andrew McQuie (pronounced “McWay”), two miles from the store. The McQuies were prosperous planters, and the intimacy begun that winter continued as long as the older members of the clan lived. We girls learned to call her “Grandma,” and never remitted the title and the affection that prompted it. Our apartments were in the “Office,” a detached brick building in the corner of the house-yard—a common appendage to most plantation-homesteads. At some period of the family history a father or son of the house had practised law or medicine, and used the “office” in that capacity. It never lost the name. And here, on a windy wintry evening, I awoke to the consciousness of my Individuality. I do not know how better to express the earliest memory I have of being—and thinking. It was a living demonstration of the great truth shallow thinkers never comprehend—“_Cogito, ergo sum_.” I had fallen asleep, tired with play, and lulled into drowsiness by the falling rain outside. I lay among the pillows of the trundle-bed at the back of the room, and, awakening with a cry of fright at finding myself, as I thought, alone, was answered by my mother’s voice. She sat by the fire in a low rocking-chair, and, guided by her reassuring tone, I tumbled out of bed and ran toward her. In the area lighted by the burning logs, I saw her, as in another sphere. To this hour I recall the impression that she was thinking of something besides myself. Baby as I was, I felt vaguely that she was not “all there,” even when she took me upon her lap. When she said, kindly and in her own sweet way, “Did my little girl think her mother had left her alone in the dark?” she did not withdraw her eyes from the ruddy fire.