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 speckled pea went straight to hell!

When these were safely landed, Mary Antony rubbed her hands and, chuckling gleefully, finished the game at gay hap-hazard, it being of less importance where the rest of the holy Ladies chanced to go.

CHAPTER II

SISTER MARY ANTONY DISCOURSES

As Mary Antony shuffled slowly from the shadow into the sunshine, a gay little flutter of wings preceded her, and a robin perched upon the parapet behind the stone seat upon which it was the lay-sister’s custom to await the sound of the turning of the key in the lock of the heavy door beneath the cloisters.

“Thou good-for-nothing imp!” exclaimed Mary Antony, her old face crinkling with delight.  “Thou little vain man, in thy red jerkin!  Beshrew thine impudence, intruding into a place where women alone do dwell, and no male thing may enter.  I would have thee take warning by the fate of the baker’s boy, who dared to climb into a tree, so that he might peep over the wall and spy upon the holy Ladies in their garden.  Boasting afterward of that which he had done, and making merry over that which he pretended to have seen, our great Lord Bishop heard of it, and sent and took that baker’s boy, and though he cried for mercy, swearing the whole tale was an empty boast, they put out his bold eyes with heated tongs, and hanged him from the very branches he had climbed.  They’d do the like to thee, thou little vain man, if Mary Antony reported on thy ways.  Wouldst like to hang, in thy red doublet?”

The robin had heard this warning tale many times already, told by old Mary Antony with infinite variety.

Sometimes the tongue of the baker’s boy was cut out at the roots; sometimes he lost his ears, or again, he was tied to a cart-tail, and flogged through the Tything.  Often he became a pieman, and once he was a turnspit in the household of the Lord Bishop himself.  But, whatever the preliminaries, and whether baker, pieman, or turnspit, his final catastrophe was always the same:  he was hanged from a bough of the very tree into which, impious and greatly daring, he had climbed.

This was an ancient tale.  All who might vouch for it, saving the old lay-sister, had passed away; and, of late, Mary Antony had been strictly forbidden by the Reverend Mother, to tell it to new-comers, or to speak of it to any of the nuns.

So, daily, she told it to the robin; and he, being neither baker’s lad, pieman, nor turnspit, and having a conscience void of offence, would listen, wholly unafraid; then, hopping nearer to Mary Antony, would look up at her, eager inquiry in his bright eyes.

On this particular afternoon he flew up into the very tree climbed by the prying and ill-fated baker’s lad, settled on a bough which branched out over the Convent wall, and poured forth a gay trill of song.