In the kitchen I met the Lady Superior. She saw how weak I was, and as she assisted me to a chair, she said, "I should not have supposed that you could get down here alone. Have you had anything to eat to-day?" I was about to say yes, but one of the nuns shook her head at me, and I replied "No." She then brought some bread and wine, requesting me to eat it quick, for fear some of the priests might come in and detect us. Thus I saw that she feared the priests as well as the rest of us. Truly, it was a terrible crime she had committed! No wonder she was afraid of being caught! Giving a poor starved nun a piece of bread, and then obliged to conceal it as she would have done a larceny or a murder! Think of it, reader, and conceive, if you can, the state of that community where humanity is a crime--where mercy is considered a weakness of which one should be ashamed! If a pirate or a highwayman had been guilty of treating a captive as cruelly as I was treated by those priests, he would have been looked upon as an inhuman monster, and at once given up to the strong grasp of the law. But when it is done by a priest, under the cloak of Religion, and within the sacred precincts of a nunnery, people cry out, when the tale is told, "Impossible!" "What motive could they have had?" "It cannot be true," etc. But whether the statement is believed or otherwise, it is a fact that in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal the least exhibition of a humane spirit was punished as a crime. The nun who was found guilty of showing mercy to a fellow-sufferer was sure to find none herself. From this time I gained very fast, for the Abbess saw how hungry I was, and she would either put food in my way, or give me privately what I wished to eat. In two weeks I was able to go to work in the kitchen again. But those I had formerly seen there were gone. I never knew what became of the sick nun, nor could I learn anything about the one who ran away with me. I thought that the men who brought me to St. Regis, were kept there to go after her, but I do not know whether they found her or not. For myself, I promised so solemnly, and with such apparent sincerity, that I would never leave the nunnery again, I was believed and trusted. Had I been kindly treated, had my life been even tolerable, my conscience would have reproached me for deceiving them, but as it was, I felt that I was more "sinned against, than sinning." I could not think it wrong to get away, if the opportunity presented, and for this I was constantly on the watch. Every night I lay awake long after all the rest were buried in slumber, trying to devise some plan, by which I could once more regain my liberty. And who can blame me? Having just tasted the sweets of freedom, how could I be content to remain in servitude all my life? Many a time have I left my bed at night, resolved to try to escape once more, but the fear of detection would deter me from the attempt.