They drove to Mt.  Bly, where they stopped to change horses, and the two men on horseback remained there, while the other two mounted the wagon and drove to Sorel.  Here the box was taken out and carried on board a boat, where two priests were waiting for me.  When the boat started, they took me out for the first time after I was put into it at St. Albans.  Three days we had been on the way, and I had tasted neither food nor drink.  How little did I think when I took my tea at Mr. Branard’s the night I left that it was the last refreshment I would have for seven days; yet such was the fact.  And how little did they think, as they lay in their quiet beds that night, that the poor fugitive they had taken to their home was fleeing for life, or for that which, to her, was better than life.  Yet so it was.  Bitterly did I reproach myself for leaving those kind friends as I did, for I thought perhaps if I had remained there, they would not have dared to touch me.  Such were my feelings then; but as I now look back, I can see that it would have made little difference whether I left or remained.  They were bound to get me, at all events, and if I had stopped there until they despaired of catching me secretly, they would undoubtedly have come with an officer, and accused me of some crime, as a pretext for taking me away.  Then, had any one been so far interested for me as to insist on my having a fair trial, how easy for them to produce witnesses enough to condemn me!  Those priests have many ways to accomplish their designs.  The American people don’t know them yet; God grant they never may.

On my arrival at the nunnery I was taken down the coal grate, and fastened to an iron ring in the back part of a cell.  The Archbishop then came down and read my punishment.  Notwithstanding the bitter grief that oppressed my spirit, I could not repress a smile of contempt as the great man entered my cell.  I remembered that before I ran away, my punishments were assigned by a priest, but the first time I fled from them a Bishop condescended to read my sentence, and now his honor the Archbishop graciously deigned to illume my dismal cell with the light of his countenance, and his own august lips pronounced the words of doom.  Was I rising in their esteem, or did they think to frighten me into obedience by the grandeur of his majestic mien?

Such were my thoughts as this illustrious personage proceeded slowly, and with suitable dignity, to unroll the document that would decide my fate.  What would it be?  Death?  It might be for aught I knew, or cared to know.  I had by this time become perfectly reckless, and the whole proceeding seemed so ridiculous, I found it exceedingly difficult to maintain a demeanor sufficiently solemn for the occasion.  But when the fixed decree came forth, when the sentence fell upon my ear that condemned me to seven days’ starvation, it sobered me at once.  Yet even then the feeling of indignation was so strong within