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New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 244, 4 January 1878, Page 13

Noyon's heroine is a servant girl. A common sewer of great depth has been opened for repairs, and four men, j>assing that way in the dark, fell in. It was not until midnight that their perilous si*lation became known. The poor wretches were already suffocathM from a poisonous vapour : their moanings were heard, and their wives and children, frantic with grief, besought the bystanders for aid ; but among all the stalwart men who gathered round the hole there was not one brave enough to go down and rescue his fellowcreatures. Then it was that Catherine Vasseur, a lass of seventeen, volunteered to descend into the pit. She was lowered into the sewer, where she fastened a rope around two of the men, and, assisted by those above, she had the happiness of restoring them to their wives and children. Again she descended and fastened the rope around the body of a third man, but her breath began to fail her. Fainting from foul air and exhaustion, she had sufficient presence of mind to knot the end with her own luxuriant tresses, so that when the dastardly fellows above drew the man to the surface they found the all but "inanimate body of the young girl swinging by her hair to the end of the rope. Fresh air and stimulants restored her to consciousness, but not in time to enable her to 6ave the fourth man, who perished in the pit. — Richmond Enquirer.