rrow streak of red. The entire brow was covered with a white
kerchief, and the face, the large eyes, the small eyebrows, the sharp
nose, the closely pressed lips, and the projecting but rather handsome
chin, had something commanding and immovable.

"Honored mother," began the maiden, "you have read the letter from
Fraeulein Perini?"

The nun--it was the superior--only turned her face a little; she seemed
to be waiting for the maiden--it was Hermanna Sonnenkamp--to speak
further.

As Manna, however, was silent, the superior said:--

"Herr von Pranken is then to make us a visit. He is a man of good
family and good morals, he seems a wordling, but he is not one exactly.
He has, indeed, the impatience of the outside world; I trust, however,
that he will not press his wooing as long as you are here our child,
that is to say, the child of the Lord."

She spoke in a very deliberate tone, and now stopped.

"Let us go away from here; the noise of the birds above there allows
one hardly to hear herself speak."

They went by the churchyard, in the middle of the island, to the grove
growings near a small rocky ledge, which the children called the
Switzerland of the island; there they sat down, and the superior
continued:--

"I am sure of you, my child, that you will decline hearing a word from
Herr von Pranken that has any reference to protestations of love, or to
the soliciting your hand in marriage."

"You know, honored mother," replied Manna,--her voice was always
pathetic, and as if veiled with tears;--"you know, honored mother, that
I have promised to take the veil."

"I know it, and I also do not know it, for what you now say or
determine is for us like a word written in the sand, which the wind and
the footsteps of man may efface. You must go out again into the world;
you must have overcome the world, before you renounce it. Yes, my
child! the whole world must appear to you like your dolls, which you
tell me of,--forgotten, valueless, dead,--a child's toy, upon which it
is scarcely conceivable that so much regard, so much love, should be
lavished."

For some time all was still, nothing was to be heard but the song of
the nightingale in the thicket, and above the river ravens were flying
in flocks and singing--men call it croaking--and soaring to their nests
in the mountain-cliffs.

"My child," began the superior, after a while, "to-day is the
anniversary of my mother's death; I have to-day prayed for her soul