I will not dwell on that sorrowful parting. Mother Joanna led me away, and when I had wept awhile, she began to quiet me. She said what was true, that I had been greatly indulged in being allowed such free intercourse with my friends, and that I must show my gratitude by striving to restrain my grief so as not to make myself ill. She said a good deal, too, in her sweet, gentle way, of submitting our wills to the will of Heaven, because that will is sure to be best for us, since our heavenly Father seeing the end from the beginning, and having, as it were, our whole lives spread out before him, can judge far better than we can. (I began to observe, about this time, that while the prioress and the other ladies invoked saints by the gross on all occasions, the mother assistant and Mother Joanna rarely or never did so.) The dear mother understood me well. I saw the reasonableness of what she urged, and made a great effort to control my feelings, and though my pillow was wet with tears for that, and more than one night afterward, I took care that my grief should be troublesome to no one. It was not long after my aunt's visit, that another friend was taken, who proved a great loss to me, and that was Sister Denys. She had gradually improved in health, and I believe the interest she took in my lessons was a great benefit to her; but I do not think she became a whit more reconciled to her way of life. She used to remind me of a vixen * Walter had, which, though tame enough to know and love her keeper, and eat out of his hand, did yet never give up trying to escape from her captivity. I remember old Ralph saying that if the creature did once really give up the hope of getting away, she would die. * All my readers may not know that Vixen is the proper name of a female fox. Sister Denys was like that vixen, I think—the hope of escape kept her alive. About this time, she began greatly to frequent a little chapel of our patron saint built in our orchard, and more than once I had seen her talking with an old man, a great, awkward, shambling creature with one eye, whom old Adam, our Scotch gardener, had hired to assist him. I wondered what she wanted with him, but I had learned by that time enough of convent politics to see much and say nothing. One fine morning, Sister Denys and the old lame gardener were both missing, and when I ventured to ask what had become of them, I was told that Sister Denys had gone to another house to be professed, and that the gardener had been dismissed. Young as I was, a kind of inkling of the truth came over me, but I did not know the whole of it till long and long after that time. Of course, there was not a word of truth in the story, but almost any thing is allowable to save scandal, as the phrase is, and a pretty big fib told in the interest of the church is, at worst, a venial sin. [Illustration] CHAPTER V. THE THUNDER STRIKES.