by painful means.

"Christ save you!" said Isel, coming into the anchorhold one evening, a
fortnight after Stephen's disappearance. "Well, you do look quiet and
peaceful for sure! and I'm that tired!--"

"Mother, I am afraid you miss me sadly," responded Derette, almost
self-reproachfully.

"I'm pleased enough to think you're out of it, child. Miss you? Well,
I suppose I do; but I haven't scarce time to think what I miss. There's
one thing I'd miss with very great willingness, I can tell you, and
that's that horrid tease, Anania. She's been at me now every day this
week, and she will make me tell her where Stephen is, and what he's gone
after,--and that broom knows as much as I do. She grinds the life out
of me, pretty nigh: and what am I to do?"

Derette smiled sympathetically. Leuesa said--

"It does seem strange he should stay so long away."

"Anania will have it he is never coming again."

"I dare say she is right there," said Derette suddenly.

"Saints alive! what dost thou mean, child? Never coming again?"

"I shouldn't wonder," said Derette quietly.

"Well, I should. I should wonder more than a little, I can tell you.
Whatever gives you that fancy, child?"

"I have it, Mother; why I cannot tell you."

"I hope you are not a prophetess!"

"I don't think I am," said Derette with a smile.

"I think Ermine was a bit of one, poor soul! She seemed to have some
notion what was coming to her. Eh, Derette! I'd give my best gown to
know those poor things were out of Purgatory. Father Dolfin says we
shouldn't pray for them: but I do--I can't help it. If I were a priest,
I'd say mass for them every day I lived--ay, I would! I never could
understand why we must not pray for heretics. Seems to me, the more
wrong they've gone, the more they want praying for. Not that _they_
went far wrong--I'll not believe it. Derette, dost thou ever pray for
the poor souls?"

"Ay, Mother: every one of them."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it. And as to them that ill-used them, let them
look to themselves. Maybe they'll not find themselves at last in such a
comfortable place as they look for. The good Lord may think that
cruelty to Christian blood [Note 3]--and they were Christian blood, no
man can deny--isn't so very much better than heresy after all. Hope he
does."

"I remember Gerard's saying," replied Derette, "that all the heresies in
the world were only men's perversions of God's truths: and that if men