gious fiend! Stand not there mocking me!
Where is the Reverend Mother?"

"Why, here am I, dear Antony," said the Prioress, in soothing tones,
coming quickly from behind the hedge.

One glance revealed, to her relief, that the lay-sister was alone.
Tears ran down the furrows of her worn old face. She knelt upon the
grass; beside her a large nosegay of flowering weeds; upon the seat,
peas strewn from out a much-used, linen bag. Above her on a bough, a
robin perched, bending to look, with roguish eye, at the scattered peas.

To the Prioress it seemed that indeed the old lay-sister must have
taken leave of her senses.

Stooping, she tried to raise her; but Mary Antony, flinging herself
forward, clasped and kissed the Reverend Mother's feet, in an
abandonment of penitence and grief.

"Nay, rise, dear Antony," said the Prioress, firmly. "Rise! I command
it. The day is warm. Thou hast been dreaming. No bold, bad man has
forced his way within these walls. No 'Knight of the Bloody Vest' is
here. Rise up and look. We are alone."

But Mary Antony, still on her knees, half raised herself, and, pointing
to the bough above, quavered, amid her sobs: "The bold, bad man is
there!"

Looking up, the Prioress met the bright eye of the robin, peeping down.

Why, surely? Yes! There was the "Bloody Vest."

The Prioress smiled. She began to understand.

The robin burst into a stream of triumphant song. At which, old Mary
Antony, still kneeling, shook her uplifted fist.

The Prioress raised and drew her to the seat.

"Now sit thee here beside me," she said, "and make full confession.
Ease thine old heart by telling me the entire tale. Then I will pass
sentence on the robin if, true to his name, he turns out to be a thief."

So there, in the Convent garden, while the robin sang overhead, the
Prioress listened to the quaint recital; the dread of making mistake in
the daily counting; the elaborate plan of dropping peas; the manner in
which the peas became identified with the personalities of the White
Ladies; the games in the cell; the taming of the robin; the habit of
sharing with the little bird, interests which might not be shared with
others, which had resulted that morning in the display of the peas, and
this undreamed of disaster--the abduction of the Reverend Mother.

The Prioress listened with outward gravity, striving to conceal all
signs of the inward mirth which seized and shook her. But more than
once