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SCENES OF TERROR.
"Father! sweet father! thank Heaven thou art come! Methought we should be burned alive in this terrible house.

Methought perchance all of you had been burned.

O father! tell me, what is befalling?
It is like the last judgment, when all the world shall be consumed with fervent heat!" Dorcas, with a white face and panting breath, stood clinging to her father's arm, as though she would never let it go.

He soothed her tenderly, striving to pacify her terrors, but it was plain that she had been through some hours of terrible fear.
"My little bird, didst thou think we should leave thee to perish here ?" asked the father, half playfully, half reproachfully; "and if so affrighted, why didst thou not fly home to thy nest?
That, at least, would have been easy." "Ah, but I could not leave my lady when all besides had fled--even the two old creatures who were never afraid of remaining when the distemper was raging all around.