erground they would
know nothing of it; but they loved not passing along the cloisters in a
storm.

The Prioress wondered why she had not heard the bell announcing their
return, and calling to the hour of prayer and silence. Also why Mary
Antony had not brought in the key and her report.

Thinking to inquire into this, she turned from the window, just as a
darting snake of fire cleft the sky. A crash of thunder followed; and,
at that moment, the door of the chamber bursting open, old Mary Antony,
breathless, stumbled in, forgetting to knock, omitting to kneel, not
waiting leave to speak, both hands outstretched, one tightly clenched,
the other holding the great key: "Oh, Reverend Mother!" she gasped.
Then the stern displeasure on that loved face silenced her. She
dropped upon her knees, ashen and trembling.

Now the Prioress held personal fear in high scorn; and if, after ninety
years' experience of lightning and thunder, Mary Antony was not better
proof against their terrors, the Prioress felt scant patience with her.
She spoke sternly.

"How now, Mary Antony! Why this unseemly haste? Why this rush into my
presence; no knock; no pause until I bid thee enter? Is the
storm-fiend at thy heels? Now shame upon thee!"

For only answer, Mary Antony opened her clenched hand: whereupon twenty
peas fell pattering to the floor, chasing one another across the
Reverend Mother's cell.

The Prioress frowned, growing suddenly weary of these games with peas.

"Have the Ladies returned?" she asked.

Mary Antony grovelled nearer, let fall the key, and seized the robe of
the Prioress with both hands, not to carry it to her lips, but to cling
to it as if for protection.

With the clang of the key on the flags, a twisted blade of fire rent
the sky.

As the roar which followed rolled away, echoed and re-echoed by distant
hills, the old lay-sister lifted her face.

Her lips moved, her gums rattled; the terror in her eyes pleaded for
help.

This was the moment when it dawned on the Prioress that there was more
here than fear of a storm.

Stooping she laid her hands firmly, yet with kindness in their
strength, on the shaking shoulders.

"What is it, dear Antony?" she said.

"Twenty White Ladies went," whispered the old lay-sister. "I counted
them. Twenty White Ladies went; but----"

"Well?"

"_Twenty-one_ returned," chattered Mary Antony, and hid her face in the
Reverend Mother's robe.

Two flashes, with their