de of a cup with fruit syrup, phials, boxes, and other objects,
lay a writing-tablet and a letter-scroll. This she took up and handed to
Orion, saying:

"A letter from your sister-in-law. It came last evening and I began
to read it; but the first words are a complaint of your father, and
that--you know, just before going to sleep--I could not read any more;
I could not bear it! And to-day; first there was church, and then the
physician came with his request about the child; I have not yet found
courage to read the rest of it.--What can any letter bring to me but
evil! Do you know at all whence anything pleasant could come to me? But
now: read me the letter. Not that part again about your father; that I
will keep till presently for myself alone."

Orion undid the roll, and with quivering lips glanced over the nun's
accusations against his father. The wildest fanaticism breathed in
every line of this epistle from the martyr's widow. She had found in the
cloister all she sought: she lived now, she said, in God alone and in
the Divine Saviour. She thought of her child, even, only as an alien,
one of God's young creatures for whom it was a joy to pray. At the same
time it was her duty to care for the little one's soul, and if it were
not too hard for her grandmother to part from her, she longed to see
Mary once more. She had lately been chosen abbess of her convent--and
no one could prevent her taking possession of the child; but she feared
lest an overwhelming natural affection might drag her back to the carnal
world, which she had for ever renounced, so she would have Mary brought
up in a neighboring nunnery, and led to Heavenly joys, not to earthly
misery--to be the wife of no sinful husband, but a pure bride of Christ.

Orion shuddered as he read and, when he laid the letter down, his mother
exclaimed:

"Perhaps she is right, perhaps it is already ordained that the child
should be sent to the convent, and not to the leech's friend, and
started on the only path that leads to Heaven without danger or
hindrance!"

But Orion said to himself that he would make it his duty to guard the
happy-hearted child from this fate, and he begged his mother to consider
that the first important point was to restore the little girl to health.
He now saw that she had been right. His father had always obeyed the
prescriptions of Philippus, and for that reason, if for no other, it
would be her duty to act by his advice.

Neforis, who fo