Head bowed, eyes on the ground, she awaited the passing feet.

They came, moving slow and sedate.

They passed—­stepping two by two, out of her range of vision; 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 replaced the helpless dismay on the old face.  She quickly closed the cell door, hung up the crypt key in its accustomed place; then kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna:  “Blessed Virgin,” she prayed, with clasped hands uplifted; “be pleased to sharpen once again the wits of old Mary Antony.”