Weeping and moaning and scarcely knowing what she did, poor Isabelle tugged at her trunks, all too heavy to be carried far, and threw about pell-mell on the floor the best clothes of herself and her husband. Her wedding dress, carefully packed up; pieces of cloth and of wool woven by her during the long winter evenings; Jeannette's christening gown, a pious maternal relic;--all lay strewn about. She put around her neck an old chain, inherited from her mother, which was her main ornament on holidays. She stowed away in her pocket a little silver cup, won long ago by her husband in a shooting contest. Awakened, like her brothers, Jeannette also had hurriedly put on her clothes, and now entered the room. Her father and brothers, taking no notice of her, were arguing with increasing anxiety the point of fleeing or of waiting at all hazards the approach of the English. From time to time they stepped to the door and, with despair plainly depicted on their faces, pointed at the conflagration which, only two leagues away, was devouring the village of St. Pierre. The flames now leaped up only by fits and starts; evidently the fire had little left to consume. "A curse upon the English! What shall we do?" So suddenly appraised of the enemy's invasion, seeing the distant conflagration, and near by her father and brothers distracted with fear and her mother nervously heaping up whatever she thought might be carried away, Jeannette, overcome by terror, trembled in every limb; and a mortal pallor overcast her face. Her eyes became suffused with tears and, her blood rushing to her head, she was, for a moment, seized with vertigo. A cloud passed before her eyes, she staggered and fell almost fainting on a stool. But her weakness was short. She soon became herself, and heard her mother calling: "Come quick, Jeannette, and help me to pack up these clothes! We shall have to flee for our lives! The English are coming and will pillage everything--and kill everything!" "Where shall we flee for safety?" asked James. "We may run up against the English on the road and that would be running towards danger!" "Let us stay here, father," John insisted, "and defend ourselves. I said so before. It is the best course to take." "But we have no arms!" cried Peter, "and those brigands are armed to the teeth! They will slaughter us all!" "What shall we do?" cried in chorus James and his sons, "what shall we do? Oh, Lord, have pity on us!" Isabelle did not listen; she heard neither her husband nor her sons. She thought only of fleeing; and she ran from one room to the other and hither and thither, to make sure that she had left nothing of value behind; and quite unable to resign herself to the giving up of her copper and tin utensils that she had so industriously polished and spread upon the dresser.