eat and galingale, and the charitable nuns never failed to
provide of their best for him on his visiting days; and whatsoever
penance he laid upon them they performed to the utmost, and with due
contrition of heart.

From Matins to Compline they regularly and decently carried out the
services of Holy Mother Church. After dinner, one read aloud to them
from the Rule, and again after supper there was reading from the life
of some notable Saint or Virgin, that thereby they might find ensample
for themselves on their own earthly pilgrimage. For the rest, they
tended their herb garden, reared their chickens, which were famous for
miles around, and kept strict watch over their haywards and
swineherds. If time was when they had nothing more important on hand,
they set to and made the prettiest blood bandages imaginable for the
Bishop, the Bishop's Chaplain, the Archdeacon, the neighbouring Abbot
and other godly men of religion round about, who were forced often to
bleed themselves for their health's sake and their eternal salvation,
so that these venerable men in process of time came to have by them
great chests full of these useful articles. If little tongues wagged
now and then as the sisters sat at their sewing in the great hall, who
shall blame them, _Eva peccatrice_? Not I; besides, some of them were
something stricken in years, and old women are garrulous and hard to
be constrained from chattering and gossiping. But being devout women
they could have spoken no evil.

One evening after Vespers all these good nuns sat at supper, the
Abbess on her high dais and the nuns ranged up and down the hall at
the long trestled tables. The Abbess had just said "_Gratias_" and
the sisters had sung "_Qui vivit et regnat per omnia saecula
saeculorum, Amen_," when in came the Manciple mysteriously, and, with
many deprecating bows and outstretchings of the hands, sidled himself
up upon the dais, and, permission having been given him, spoke to the
Lady Mother thus:

"Madam, there is a certain pilgrim at the gate who asks refreshment
and a night's lodging." It is true he spoke softly, but little pink
ears are sharp of hearing, and nuns, from their secluded way of life,
love to hear news of the great world.

"Send him away," said the Abbess. "It is not fit that a man should lie
within this house."

"Madam, he asks food and a bed of straw lest he should starve of
hunger and exhaustion on his way to do penance and worship at the Holy
Sh