forces in hollow thunder upon Arctic heights. And
when, in due pursuance of the symbolic rite of Rome, the vested priest and
her whole Sisterhood suddenly withdrew from the grave, and left her
earthly body, how wonderful in its marble, hushed, close-folded,
mysterious beauty none who had looked upon it ever could forget, waiting
for the second coming of her Master and her Lord, a great sob mounted, and
broke from every breast, and every face was drenched with sudden tears.
Perhaps God let her see how much they loved her in that parting hour. And
then the bugle sounded "Last Post" over both the open graves, softly for
fear of Brounckers' German gunners, and the great crowd melted away, and
all was done and over.

I have said that all the people wept. There was a girl in white, for she
would not let the Sisters put black garments on her, kneeling between
Sister Tobias and Sister Hilda-Antony. This girl did not weep at all.
Chief mourner at both these funerals, she was not conscious of the fact.
She knew that Beauvayse was on duty at Maxim Outpost South, and could not
get away, and that the Reverend Mother was vexed with her, and was hiding
at the Convent, pretending that she had gone somewhere, and would never
come back.

She was especially clear of mind when she thought all this. At other
times she was not Lynette, and knew no one, and had never known anybody of
the name. She was the ragged Kid, crouching on the Little Kopje in the
gathering twilight or on the long mound that its eastward shadow covered.
Or she was lying under the tattered horse-blanket on the foul straw pallet
in the outhouse, waiting for the Lady to come with the great, kind,
covering dark.

Or she was sitting in the bar-parlour on an upturned cube-sugar box beside
the green rep sofa where Bough lolled on wet days or stormy nights, her
great eyes wild with apprehension, her every nerve tense and strained with
terror of the master in his condescending moods, when he would make
pretence of teaching her to scrawl coarse pothooks and hangers on the
greasy slate that usually hung below the glass-and-bottle shelf. Or--and
at these times the Sisters found her difficult to manage--she was
crouching upon one side of a locked door, and a long thin wire was feeling
its way into the keyhole on the other side, and the man who manipulated it
laughed as the agile pliers nipped the end of the key and turned it in the
wards of the lock....

And then she would be r