regain
her composure before she went down.

The nuns who were not on night-duty were gathered together about the
trestle-table sewing, while the lay-Sisters prepared the scanty evening
meal. Lynette was there, sitting pale and quiet on her corner-stool.
Richard's daughter had been watching and waiting for her Mother. Ah! to
see the relief and gladness leap into the dear face, and shine in the
beautiful wistful eyes that had shed such tears, dear God!--such tears of
anguish upon Sunday--and then had dried at the utterance of her decree--

"You are never to tell him!"

--And changed into radiant stars of joy, by whose light the darkness of
her own wickedness and misery seemed almost bearable.

"It is the Mother. Mother----"

Lynette sprang up, and would have hurried to her, but the Mother lifted a
warning hand, and calling Sister Tobias to her, passed aside into a
curtained-off and precautionary cave that had been hollowed out behind the
ladder. This was the custom when the ladies of the Holy Way returned from
doubtful or infectious cases. Lynette sighed, and went back to her stool
to wait. The busy needles had not ceased stitching.

That humble saint, Sister Tobias, hurried to her diligent ministry of
purification. When she came in with hot water and carbolic spray, she
brought a letter with her. It was directed to the Mother in a coarse
round-hand.

"Somebody dropped this down the ladder-hole as I came by with my kettle,"
said Sister Tobias. "It's the first letter-box I ever knew that was as
wide as the door. Maybe 'twill bring in a new fashion, for all we know."
She made her homely joke with a sore heart for the sorrow she read in the
Mother's beloved face, and trotted away to fetch clean towels, saying--a
favourite saying with Sister Tobias--that her head would never save her
heels.

The Mother opened the letter. It was anonymous, and utterly vile. Had the
pen been dipped in liquid ordure, the thing written could not have been
more defiling to the touch than its meaning was to this pure woman's
chaste eyes. Had a puff-adder writhed out of the envelope, and struck its
fangs into her beautiful hand, it would have poisoned her less certainly.
And every beat of the obscene words upon her brain, strangely enough,
awakened an echo of those long padding footsteps that had followed in the
dark. And the writer knew of all that had happened at the tavern on the
veld, when a human brute had triumphed in his bestiality,