Mother Joanna continued mistress of the novices, though her task was a light one, for we had very few accessions; our elections were regularly gone through with, but they were no more than a form, since the very same officers were elected over and over, save when some one died. Sister Sacristine, who was only a middle-aged woman when I came to Dartford, was growing old and feeble. Two new bursars had been elected. The trees had grown older, and the old Scotch gardener more opinionated. Sister Cicely's hands grew too stiff to manage the organ at times, and I often took her place, and acquitted myself to the satisfaction of my hearers; and these are about all the changes I remember, till the great change of all. I have said our lives were very quiet, and so they were. But when a storm is raging, it is hard to keep all knowledge or sign of it out of the house. We heard, now and again, rumors of the changes that were going on outside. I remember well when Sister Emma, the stewardess, heard from Dame Hurst, who now and then brought oysters and other sea-fish for sale, that a great English Bible had been chained to a pillar in the parish church at Dartford; where any one who listed could go and hear it read, or read it for themselves, if they pleased. Sister Emma told us this wonderful piece of news when we were all assembled under the grape-arbor, shelling of peas for our fast day mess. It was received with a degree of horror and amazement, which seems strange as I remember it, now that every householder who can afford it may have a Bible of his own. "What an indignity!" exclaimed Sister Agnes. "To think that the Holy Scripture should be chained to a pillar, like a man in a pillory, to be thumbed over by every village clown or dirty fisherman who can make shift to spell out a few words." "You would not compare a pillar in the house of our Lord to a pillory, would you, sister?" asked mother assistant, with that gentle smile of ridicule which I, for one, dreaded more than the rod, when I had been naughty. "Why, no, reverend mother, not exactly," answered Sister Agnes, in some confusion. "Any how, it is not the true Word of God, but only the heretics' translation," said Sister Margaret, sharply. "So it does not matter what is done with it." "I don't know about that," remarked another sister, rather timidly. "I suppose it could not be put in the churches every where, without the consent of the bishops and the other clergy; and they would not allow an heretical and false translation in such a place, surely. Only it is a pity the poor people should be allowed to peril their souls' salvation by reading the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue." Even then, I remember, it struck me as curious, that peoples' salvation should be endangered by reading the Word of God, but I said nothing.