As the Prioress walked to and fro, unconsciously missing the daily exercise of the passage to the Cathedral, she noted a sudden darkening of her chamber.  Going to the window, she saw the sky grown black with thunder clouds.  So quickly the storm gathered, that the bright summer world without seemed suddenly hung over with a deep purple pall.

Birds screamed and darted by, on hurried wing; then, reaching home, fell silent.  All nature seemed to hold its breath, awaiting the first flash, and the first roll of thunder.

Still standing at her window, the Prioress questioned whether the nuns were returned, and safely in their cells.  While underground 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.