ock she had sustained and
all her hurry and fright, that she did not perceive the folly of her
wandering farther, "for I have certainly gone far beyond the length of a
city block, even. Perhaps I am in the heart of a great aqueduct
system--it is all walled and ceiled with stone."

At last the dim glow faded and she was in the utter dark. But she dared
not go back, for she had no clew to the stone stairs and had lost all
her reckoning.

A piercing chill grew in the dead air; the silence was terrifying. But
just as her brain cleared and fear began to creep into her blood, such
fatigue had laid hold on her that the fear could not choke her--she was
too far spent.

"To die like a rat in a drain!" she whimpered. "To stifle underground!
Oh, I am too old for it! He might have let me die in my bed!"

Just then she saw ahead of her--she could not say if it were far or
near--an arch, the outline of a low door, lighted through the cracks of
it, and she drove her weary feet toward this and bent upon it, but
uselessly, for it was thick stone. With her last remnant of strength she
set her mouth to the crack and screamed, and it seemed to her that
three loud knocks upon the other side answered her in some sort. She
screamed again. Again came the three knocks and close against the crack
a voice whispered.

"In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I adjure you,
wandering soul, be quiet!"

The voice was shaking with a fear as great as her own, and this gave her
courage. She put her lips to the crack and cried:

"I am no wandering soul, but a poor woman! I am lost in this great
vault--open, and let me out!"

"Do you swear this by the Holy Trinity, the Wounds of Christ and--and
the Sorrows of Mary?"

"I swear it by anything you wish," she called, "if you will open the
door and see how little you have to fear from me! But I shall soon be as
dead as you think me, unless you make haste, for I am nearly frozen."

Now a rusty key grated, and after much tugging and panting from the
other side, the door opened a little way and the scared head of a brown
friar, such as one sees in the old countries, hooded and tonsured,
peeped out.

"Mother of us all!" he cried fearfully, "and what--who art thou, then?"

"Only a woman, father," she said gently, for he was clearly ready to
shut her back into the dark. "I am here by mistake. I only ask to be put
on my way again, and I will not trouble your monastery."

For she had tr