like to that of a terrier dog which,
being accustomed to worry and torment a certain ewe-sheep, comes upon
the same after it has lambed and finds a new creature--one that, instead
of running in affright, turns upon it and, with head and hood and all
its weight of mutton, butts, and leaps, and tramples. Then what chance
has that dog against the terrible and unsuspected fury of the sheep,
born, as it thought, for it to tear? Then what can it do but run,
panting and discomfited, to its kennel? So it was with the Abbot at the
onslaught of Mother Matilda in the defence of her lamb--Cicely. With
Emlyn he had been prepared to exchange bite for bite--but Mother
Matilda! his own pet quarry. It was too much. He could only go away,
cursing all women and their infinite variety, on which no man might
build. Who would have thought it of Mother Matilda, of all people on the
earth!

So it came to pass that at the Nunnery, notwithstanding these terrible
threats, things went on much as they had done before, since the times
were such that even an all-powerful and remote Lord Abbot, with "right
of gallows," could not drive matters to an extremity. Cicely was not
shut into the dungeon and fed on bread and water, much less was she
scourged. Nor was she separated from her nurse Emlyn, although it is
true that the Prioress reproved her for her resistance to established
authority, and when she had finished her lecture, kissed and blessed
her, and called her "her sweet child, her dove and joy."

But if there was sameness at the Nunnery, at the Abbey there was
constant change and excitement. Only three days after the fire the great
flock of eight hundred lambs rushed one night over the Red Cliff on the
fell, where, as all shepherds in that country know, there is a sheer
drop of forty feet. Never was lamb's flesh so cheap in Blossholme and
the country round as on the morrow of that night, while every hind
within ten miles could have a winter coat for the skinning. Moreover,
it was said and sworn to by the shepherds that the devil himself, with
horns and hoofs, and mounted on a jackass, had been seen driving the
same lambs.

Next the ghost of Sir John Foterell appeared, clad in armour, sometimes
mounted and sometimes afoot, but always at night-time. First this
dreadful spirit was perceived walking in the gardens of Shefton Hall,
where it met the Abbot's caretaker--for the place was now shut up--as he
went to set a springe for hares. He was a ma