to them, had it not been for an old man, over whose head near a century had past, and who was a member of the happy family, in which the Sisters resided. This good father would often take the two girls apart from their playmates, and recount to them particulars of the ancient Houses of Carlsheim, Torrenburg, and Homburg. Mary and Rosanna (so were the Sisters called, while under Tell’s roof) listened to him with the greatest interest, and each selected a heroine from among the Helens, Emmelines, and Uranias, as the object of her peculiar admiration. But such ladies of those illustrious families, as had finished their lives in a cloister, were sure of obtaining the favour of the gentle serious Mary. She was not fourteen, when she made a pilgrimage to the Convent of Engelberg for the purpose of kissing the stone, on which Amalberga was kneeling, when surprised by Landenberg’s emissaries; and she frequently expressed a wish, that she might one day be permitted to take the veil in that Convent, which had so long given shelter to the heiress of Sargans. The laughing Rosanna often added to this wish an assertion, that her sister hoped like Amalberga to exchange in due time the cloister for a bridal garland; but Mary’s conduct sufficiently proved, that her religious vocation was at that time no affectation. She was just sixteen, when William Tell was obliged to comply with her entreaties, and suffer her to reside at Engelberg. He seemed to consent to this step unwillingly: but he comforted himself with the reflection, that the rules of this House permitted no one to pronounce the irrevocable vow, who had not completed her twenty-fifth year; a period, before whose arrival a thousand accidents must necessarily have taken place, capable of shaking the most determined resolutions and the most ardent zeal. Rosanna accompanied her sister to the Convent, and for a few days forced herself to be pleased and satisfied with the religious tranquillity of her new abode. But at length she could no longer conceal from herself, that nothing save Mary’s society could have made the manners of a convent endurable; and that in fact she was much better calculated for singing and dancing with her young companions on the village green, than for attending the Abbess and her Nuns to the midnight mass. She therefore endeavoured to give her occupations some variety by taking an active part in the internal arrangements of the Convent.