riving hurry of muddy
vapours. The grey hills were blotted out by mist and fog. Long flashes of
white fire leaped from them, and the heavy boom of cannon followed. Then
all would be still again. She passed down the whitewashed, matted, sodden
corridor, and drew out the heavy key of the chapel door from a deep pocket
under her black habit, and went in.

Rain beat in here through jagged holes in the soft brickwork and poured
through the broken roof, whose rubbish littered the floor. Whiter squares
on the whitewashed walls, sodden now with damp, and peeling, showed where
the pictures of the Stations of the Cross had hung; with them all
draperies had been stripped away and hidden. The crimson-velvet-covered
ropes that had done duty instead of altar-rails had been removed, their
brass supports unscrewed from the floor. The naked altar-stone was covered
with fragments of cheap stained-glass from the little east window of which
the Sisters had been so proud. The Tabernacle gaped empty; sandy,
reddish-grey dust filled the tiny piscina, and lay thick upon the
altar-stone and the shallow wooden altar-steps, and wherever else the rain
had not reached it to turn it into yellow mud.

Why had she come here? Because she felt as though the Presence that had
housed under the veil of the Consecrated Element were still guarding Its
desecrated home. And near the door of the tiny sacristy dangled the rope
communicating with the bell that hung, as yet uninjured, in the little
wooden cupola upon the roof. The bell could be rung, should need arise.
She did not formulate in thought what need. But the recollection of those
poisonous adder-eyes stirred even in that proud, dauntless woman's bosom a
cold and creeping fear. And when she heard the padding, stealthy footsteps
whose sound seemed burned in upon her brain, traversing the soaked matting
of the corridor, she caught her breath, and an icy dew of anguish
moistened her shuddering flesh.

Then slowly, cautiously, the door opened. He came in, shutting it
noiselessly after him. It was the man she had seen loafing by the
lamp-post. And, standing tall and forbidding on the bare altar's
carpetless steps, she threw out her white hand in a quick, imperious
gesture, forbidding his nearer approach.

For an instant the dignity and authority of the tall, black-robed figure
gave pause even to Bough. Then he touched his wide-brimmed felt hat to her
with a civility that was the very essence of insolence,