,
To thy shelter take us--_"

when suddenly I became aware that I alone was singing, the children
about me being silent, and even the Maestro's baton slowing down. Then I
saw that all eyes were turned in my direction, and overwhelmed with
confusion I stopped, for my voice broke and slittered into silence.

"Go on, little angel," said the Maestro, but I was trembling all over by
this time and could not utter a sound.

Nevertheless the Reverend Mother said: "Let Mary O'Neill sing the hymn
in church in future."

As soon as I had conquered my nervousness at singing in the presence of
the girls, I did so, singing the first line of each verse alone, and I
remember to have heard that the congregations on Sunday afternoons grew
larger and larger, until, within a few weeks, the church was densely
crowded.

Perhaps my childish heart was stirred by vanity in all this, for I
remember that ladies in beautiful dresses would crowd to the bronze
screen that separated us from the public and whisper among themselves,
"Which is she?" "The little one in the green scarf with the big eyes!"
"God bless her!"

But surely it was a good thing that at length life had began to have a
certain joy for me, for as time went on I became absorbed in the life of
the Convent, and particularly in the services of the church, so that
home itself began to fade away, and when the holidays came round and
excuses were received for not sending for me, the pain of my
disappointment became less and less until at last it disappeared
altogether.

If ever a child loved her mother I did, and there were moments when I
reproached myself with not thinking of her for a whole day. These were
the moments when a letter came from Father Dan, telling me she was less
well than before and her spark of life had to be coaxed and trimmed or
it would splutter out altogether.

But the effect of such warnings was wiped away when my mother wrote
herself, saying I was to be happy as she was happy, because she knew
that though so long separated we should soon be together, and the time
would not seem long.

Not understanding the deeper meaning that lay behind words like these, I
was nothing loath to put aside the thought of home until little by
little it faded away from me in the distance, just as the island itself
had done on the day when I sailed out with Martin Conrad on our great
voyage of exploration to St. Mary's Rock.

Thus two years and a half passed since I