here were other circumstances which
gave the Priory a sinister reputation. The very aspect of the building
was enough to suggest weird impressions. Its high white walls were
blotched with patches of mildew, and in some parts there were long
greenish stains from roof to ground, like tear streaks on the crumbling
plaster. Indoors there was a dank graveyard smell in the low corridors
and narrow stair-cases. Floors and ceilings were equally worm-eaten and
rotten. Broad flakes of plaster from the walls lay littered about in
the passages. The wind, too, penetrated the building through many
cracks and crannies, so that there was a constant sighing and soughing
in the big dreary rooms, which had a most eerie and melancholy effect.

Kate soon learned, however, that, besides these vague terrors, all
predisposing the mind to alarm and exciting the imagination, there was a
general belief that another more definite cause for fear existed in the
old monastery. With cruel minuteness of detail her guardian had told
her the legend which haunted those gloomy corridors.

It appears that in olden times the Priory had been inhabited by
Dominicans, and that in the course of years these monks had fallen away
from their original state of sanctity. They preserved a name for piety
among the country folk by their austere demeanour, but in secret, within
the walls of their own monastery, they practised every sort of
dissipation and crime.

While the community was in this state of demoralization, each, from the
abbot downwards, vying with the other in the number and enormity of
their sins, there came a pious-minded youth from a neighbouring village,
who begged that he might be permitted to join the order. He had been
attracted, he said, by the fame of their sanctity. He was received
amongst them, and at first was not admitted to their revels, but
gradually, as his conscience was supposed to become more hardened, he
was duly initiated into all their mysteries. Horrified by what he saw,
the good youth concealed his indignation until he had mastered all the
abominations of the establishment, and then, rising up on the altar
steps, he denounced them in fiery, scathing words. He would leave them
that night, he said, and he would tell his experiences through the
length and breadth of the country. Incensed and alarmed, the friars
held a hasty meeting, and then, seizing the young novice, they dragged
him down the cellar steps and locked him