THE SACRIFICING MOTHER
The story is told of a hen-house that caught fire during the night. The farmer came out to fight the fire, and when he finally got it extinguished — he found the smouldering body of a mother hen, burnt and scarred — but still sitting on her nest. She had not run with the rest of the chickens — and when the farmer lifted up the scorched hen — there beneath the hen was the brood of chicks, protected and still alive — because the mother hen had been willing rather to absorb the heat and the flame in her own body than desert the vulnerable chicks who would most certainly have died in the fire.
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