Even at that dreadful moment the nurse's presence of mind did not fail her.

Hurrying back to the place that she had just left, near which she had already noticed the miller's empty sacks lying in a heap, she seized two of them, and, throwing them on the smoldering floor, trampled out the fire.

That done, she knelt by the senseless woman, and lifted her head.
Was she wounded?
or dead?
Mercy raised one helpless hand, and laid her fingers on the wrist.
While she was still vainly trying to feel for the beating of the pulse, Surgeon Surville (alarmed for the ladies) hurried in to inquire if any harm had been done.
Mercy called to him to approach.

"I am afraid the shell has struck her," she said, yielding her place to him.

"See if she is badly hurt." The surgeon's anxiety for his charming patient expressed itself briefly in an oath, with a prodigious emphasis laid on one of the letters in it--the letter R."Take off her cloak," he cried, raising his hand to her neck.