in clock
in a deal case was nailed up under the floral cornice, and beneath it
there hung the text: "Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle, or who
shall rest upon thy holy hill? Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life."
The old dining-room was now the community room, the old kitchen was the
refectory, the spacious bedrooms were partitioned into cells, and the
corridors, which had once been covered with tapestry, were now coated
with whitewash, and bore the inscription, "Silence in the passages."

In this house of poverty and dignity, of past grandeur and present
simplicity, the brothers lived in community. They were forty in number,
consisting of ten lay brothers, ten novices, and twenty professed
Fathers. The lay brothers, who were under the special direction of their
own Superior, the Father Minister, and were rarely allowed to go into the
street, had to clean the house and bake the bread and cook and serve the
food which was delivered at the door, and thus, in that narrow circle of
duty, they proved their piety by their devotion to a lot which condemned
them to scour and scrub to the last day of life. The clerical brothers,
who were nearly all in full orders, enjoyed a more varied existence,
being confined to the precincts only during a part of their novitiate,
and then sent out at the will of the Superior to preach in the churches
of London or the country, and even despatched on expeditions to establish
missions abroad.

The lay brothers had their separate retiring room, but John Storm met his
clerical housemates on the night of his arrival. It was the hour of
evening recreation, and they were gathered in the community room for
reading and conversation. The stately old dining-room was as destitute as
the corridors of adornments or even furniture. Straw armchairs stood on
the clean, white floor; a bookcase, containing many volumes of the
Fathers, lined one of the panelled walls; and over the majestic fireplace
there was a plain card with the inscription, "There be eunuchs which have
made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake."

The brothers gathered about him and examined him with a curiosity which
was more than personal. To this group of men, detached from life, the
arrival of some one from the outer world was an event of interest. He
knew what wars had been waged, what epidemics were raging, what
Governments had risen and fallen. He might not speak of these things in
casual talk, for it was against