ld hear the poor thin hands of Sister Agatha beating upon
the panels of the door.

Thus does the anguish of a tortured brain leave its imperishable
impress upon the surroundings in which the mind once suffered, though
the freed spirit may have long forgotten, in the peace of Paradise,
that slight affliction, which was but for a moment, through which it
passed to the eternal weight of glory.

Of late, the old lay-sister, Mary Antony, had grown fearful lest she
should make mistake in this solemn office of the counting. Therefore,
in the secret of her own heart, she devised a plan, which she carried
out under cover of her scapulary. Twenty-five dried peas she held
ready in her wallet; then, as each veiled figure, having mounted the
steps leading from the crypt doorway, moved slowly past her, she
dropped a pea with her right hand into her left. When all the holy
Ladies had passed, if all had returned, five-and-twenty peas lay in her
left hand, none remained in the wallet.

This secret dropping of peas became a kind of game to Mary Antony.
She kept the peas in a small linen bag, and often took them out and
played with them when alone in her cell, placing them all in a row, and
settling, to her own satisfaction, which peas should represent the
various holy Ladies.

A large white pea, of finer aspect than the rest, stood for the noble
Prioress herself; a somewhat shrivelled pea, hard, brown, and wizened,
did duty as Mother Sub-Prioress, an elderly nun, not loved by Mary
Antony because of her sharp tongue and strict fault-finding ways; while
a pale and speckled pea became Sister Mary Rebecca, held in high scorn
by the old lay-sister, as a traitress, sneak, and liar, for if ever
tale of wrong or shame was whispered in the Convent, it could be traced
for place of origin to the slanderous tongue and crooked mind of Sister
Mary Rebecca.

When all the peas in line upon the floor of her cell were named, old
Mary Antony marked out a distant flagstone, on which the sunlight fell,
as heaven; another, partially in shadow, purgatory; a third, in a far
corner of exceeding darkness, hell. She then proceeded, with
well-directed fillip of thumb and middle finger, to send the holy
Ladies there where, in her judgment, they belonged.

If the game went well, the noble Prioress landed safely in heaven,
without even the most transitory visit to purgatory; Mother
Sub-Prioress, rolling into purgatory, remained there; while the pale
and sp