on an
island in the Rhine they found rest and refreshment at a convent-inn.
The host, wife, child, cook, and soldiers three, quartered there, gave
them welcome and good cheer. Their parlor was that of the lady abbess,
and her bedchamber fell to Mrs. Cooper. "The girls were put into cells,
where girls ought never to be put," wrote their father. _He_ "sallied
forth alone, in quest of sensation," and got it in the muttering of
thunder, and the flashing of lightning over the "pitchy darkness of the
seven mountains." And he and the fiercely howling winds from the trees
had a chase through the gloomy cloisters, whence he saw, in the vast,
cavern-like kitchen, the honest islanders eating with relish his surplus
supper.

[Illustration: CONVENT OF NUNNENWORTH.]

As the storm grew in strength Cooper went to the corridor above, leading
past their rooms To-and-fro he paced until a bright flash revealed the
far, end door to which he went, opened, and entered into utter darkness.
Taking a few steps he paused--"for the whole seemed filled by a clatter,
as of ten thousand bat-wings against glass." His hand rested on
something--he knew not what--when by another vivid flash he saw that he
was in an open gallery of the convent chapel. The bat-wings were small,
broken panes of the high arched windows, rattling in the gale. Yet by
the chasing flashes of angry light he saw beneath him grim figures in
the shadowy motions of troubled spirits. They wore upon his nerves,
until he caught himself shouting: "'Ship ahoy; ship ahoy! What cheer,
what cheer?' in a voice as loud as the winds." He was about to speak
when his gallery door opened and the withered face of an old crone
appeared by a flash; then came thunder, and the face vanished. After a
pause the door opened again, and on the same uncomely face, when,
without thought, our author gave a loud, deep groan. The door slammed on
the time-stricken form, and he was again alone with the storm-demons who
now soon grew drowsy and went to sleep, and he himself went to
bed,--and, wrote he, "slept like a postillion in a cock-loft, or a
midshipman in the middle-watch." But regret came in the morning when
Mrs. Cooper told her husband how a poor old soul, frightened by the
storm, had stolen into the chapel to pray, where, on hearing strange
groans, she dropped her candle and fled in fear to Madam's maid, who
gave her bed-shelter for the night. An after-breakfast look at the
storm-ridden chapel disclosed