I asked her,
seeing her shaking and quite flustered-like. And she answers, 'I don't
know....' And 'Was it anyone you knew?' I puts to her again, and 'I can't
tell,' says she, like as if she was answering in her sleep. Do you thinks
she understands we're talking about her, poor lamb?"

They both looked at her, and she, having been taught by painful experience
that to be the object of simultaneous observation on the part of the man
and woman meant punishment involving stripes, began to tremble, and hung
her head. From under her tangled hair she peeped from side to side,
wondering what it was she had left undone? Ah!--the broom, standing in the
corner. She had forgotten to sweep out the house-place and the bar. When
the dreaded eyes turned from her, she got up and went softly to the corner
where Sister Tobias's besom stood, and took it and began to sweep, casting
terrified glances through her hair at her two Fates.

Something gripped Saxham by the heart and wrung it. The scalding tears
were bitter in his throat. Do what he would to keep them free, his eyes
were dimmed and blinded, and Sister Tobias wiped her own openly with the
blue cotton handkerchief.

"We thought the young gentleman would be waiting near the Convent," said
Sister Tobias, "or in one of the ground-floor rooms, but he wasn't there.
Me and Sister Hilda-Antony looked at one another. 'Early days for a young
girl's sweetheart to be late at the meeting-place!' says Sister
Hilda-Antony's eyes to me, and mine said back, 'The Lord grant no harm's
come to him!' We waited five minutes by the school clock, that's never
been let run down, and then another five, and still he didn't come. He had
got his death-wound, though we didn't know it, hours before."

"The Angel of Death had spread his wings over the Convent. Both me and
Sister Hilda-Antony felt there was a strange and awful stillness and
solemnness about the place. At last me and her told the child that go we
must. We'd wait no longer. But _she_, knowing we'd never leave without
her, ran upstairs. We heard her light feet going over the wet matting and
down the long passage to the chapel door. Then----"

Sister Tobias sobbed for another moment in the blue handkerchief. The
child, who had been diligently sweeping, looked at the woman and at the
big man who had made her cry, with great dilated eyes of fear. She put the
broom back noiselessly in its corner, and stole back to her stool. Who
knew what might