"Holy! holy! O yes, we are holy as you!" And: "What do you think of God now? Is not Sherman greater?" Because of the sacred character of the establishment, because General Sherman was a Catholic, and because he had sent assurances of protection to the Mother Superior, they had felt safe. But they had to go. "I marched in the procession through the blazing streets," wrote the Western girl, "venerable Father O'Connell at the head holding high the crucifix, the black-robed Mother Superior and the _religieuses_ following with their charges, the white-faced, frightened girls and children, all in line and in perfect order. They sought the Catholic church for safety, and the Sisters put the little ones to sleep on the cushioned pews; then the children, driven out by roystering soldiers, ran stumbling and terror-stricken into the graveyard and crouched behind gravestones." One soldier said he was sorry for the women and children of South Carolina, but the hotbed of secession must be destroyed. "But I am not a South Carolinian," retorted the Western girl, "I am from Ohio. Our Mother Superior was in the same Convent in Ohio with General Sherman's sister and daughter." "The General ought to know that," he responded quickly. "If you are from Ohio--that's my state--I'll help you." For answer, she pointed to the Convent; the cross above it was falling. They recur to my mind in unison--that cross, sacred alike to North and South, falling above a burning city, and the falling Southern Cross, Dixie's beautiful battle-flag. Two nuns, conferring apart if it would not be well to take the children into the woods, heard a deep, sad voice saying: "Your position distresses me greatly!" Startled, they turned to perceive a Federal officer beside a tombstone just behind them. "Are you a Catholic," they asked, "that you pity us?" "No; simply a man and a soldier." Dawn came, and with it some Irish soldiers to early Mass. Appalled, they cried: "O, this will never do! Send for the General! The General would never permit it!" At reveille all arson, looting and violence had ceased as by magic, even as conflagration had started as by magic in the early hours of the night when four signal rockets went up from as many corners of the town. But the look of the desolated city in the glare of daylight was indescribable. Around the church were broken and empty trunks and boxes; in the entrance stood a harp with broken strings. General Sherman came riding by; the Mother Superior summoned him; calmly facing the Attila of his day, she said in her clear, sweet voice: "General, this is how you keep your promise to me, a cloistered nun, and these my sacred charges." General Sherman answered: "Madame, it is all the fault of your negroes, who gave my soldiers liquor to drink."