n; moving
along the cloister, dying away in the distance.

All had passed.

Nay! Not all? Another comes! Surely, another comes?

Sister Abigail, lifting the lantern, rose up noisily.

"What wait you for, Sister Antony? The holy Ladies have by now entered
their cells."

Mary Antony lifted startled eyes.

The golden bars of sunlight fell across an empty cloister.

A few white figures in the passage, seen in the distance through the
open door, were vanishing, one by one, into their cells.

Mary Antony covered her dismay with indignation.

"Be off, thou impudent hussy! Hold thy noisy tongue and hang thy
rattling lantern on a nail; or, better still, hold thy lantern, and
hang thyself, holding it, upon the nail. If I am piously minded to
pray here until sunset, that is no concern of thine. Be off, I say!"

Left alone, Mary Antony slowly opened her right hand, and peered into
the palm.

One pea lay within it.

She went over to the seat and counted, with trembling fingers, the peas
from her left hand.

Twenty-four! One holy Lady had therefore not returned. This must be
reported at once to the Reverend Mother. In her excitement, Mary
Antony forgot the emotion which had so recently possessed her.

Bustling down the steps, she drew the key from the door, paused one
moment to peep into the dank darkness, listening for running footsteps
or a voice that called; then closed the door, locked it, drew forth the
key, and hurried to the Reverend Mother's cell.

The door stood ajar, just as she had left it.

She knocked, but entered without waiting to be bidden, crying: "Oh,
Reverend Mother! Twenty-five holy Ladies went to Vespers, and but
twenty-four have"----

Then her voice died away into silence.

The Reverend Mother's cell was empty.

Stock-still stood Mary Antony, while her world crumbled from beneath
her old feet and her heaven rolled itself up like a scroll, from over
her head, and departed.

The Reverend Mother's cell was empty.

It was the Reverend Mother who had not returned.

"Good-bye, my Antony. The Presence of the Lord abide with thee in
blessing, while we are gone." Ah, gone! Never to return!

Once again the old lay-sister stood as one that dreamed; but this time
instead of beatific joy, there was a forlorn pathos in the dreaming.

Presently a door opened, and a step sounded, far away in the passage
beyond the Refectory stairs.

Instantly a look of cunning and determination rep