ering
and blazing, climbing, and licking with thin, greenish tongues of
hell-begotten flame.

Then the midnight hour struck, and it was time to rise for Matins. Long
after the Sisters had gone back to bed the Mother knelt on, a motionless
figure wrestling in silent prayer before the silver Crucifix upon the
wall. Dawn found her still kneeling. No ray of heavenly light had found
her soul, that weltered in darkness, crying to One Who seemed not to hear.

LI

She did not venture to take Lynette with her to the Hospital next day, but
secretly charged Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda-Antony to carry her
whithersoever they went, and not once to let her out of sight. This done,
she knew herself impotently helpless to do more. This strong and salient
woman, lapped in unseen, impalpable serpent-coils that tightened every
hour, was waxing weak. By her own deed she had barred out help and put
counsel far from her. She had known the punishment would not be long in
coming, when, for the sake of Richard's daughter, she had lied to
Richard's friend.

Now she knew, poor, noble, suffering soul, that it would have been wiser
to have saved her spotless garment from the smirch by telling him the
truth. Then she could have fought this invisible tarantula Thing, with the
conjectural hairy claws, the baleful, glittering eyes, and the padding
feet that dogged her in the dark, with a strong man's arm to aid her. God
was in Heaven, and in Him were her faith and trust, but the comfort of a
human counsellor would have been unspeakable.

In a purely spiritual difficulty she would have gone to Father Wix. The
kindly, fussy, feeble little old priest could hardly help her in this
extremity. She had never told _him_ what had happened at the tavern on the
veld. Deep in her pitying woman's heart the child's cruel secret had been
buried, once learned. Sister Tobias was the only one who shared it.

Meanwhile she was followed that night and the next night; and on the
morning of the Thursday, when she rose from her sleepless bed, another
letter weighted with a stone had been dropped down the ladder-hole. She
was to give the anonymous writer a meeting and receive a message, unless
she wished them that chose to be nameless to lay in wait for the girl.
Most likely that would be the better way. She could choose.

She burned the second letter before she went to the Hospital. She found
there the single sheet of the _Siege Gazette_ fluttering in every