“Then after a long time, he stirred himself uneasily and uttered one word, ‘Margery.’ And she--alas the day!--put out her arm and laid it on his shoulder. In an instant the dying man half raised himself on his bed and turned his eyes on her, and there was recognition in them. And one arm he threw about her neck, and felt blindly for the fair locks that had been shorn long since, and he said heavily and painfully, ‘Margery, _belle amie_, let us go to the pool above the mill, where the great pike lie, and sun and shadow lie on the deep water.’ So Thomas knew that they were boy and girl again by the old mill at Trumpington. “That was all, and the end came soon. They two laid him decently beneath his white sheet, and Margery plucked two white roses from the spray that straggled across his window, and laid them on the dead man’s breast. So they left him, with the candle still burning out into the dark. * * * * * “There was a horrible dread in St Radegund’s when, four days later, sister Margery sickened of the pestilence; and it was worse when we learnt soon after that Thomas Key was visited--then that he was dead. That was the beginning of our sorrows. You have heard, Lady Prioress, how three sisters died before August was out, how most of the others deserted the house, and some never returned to it. Our prayers were unheard, and to us who remained it seemed as if the saints slept, or God were dead. “So it happened that when the plague abated, and the first meeting was held in St Radegund’s Chapter-house, about St Luke’s day in the autumn, there were only three to attend it--the Prioress, the Sacrist (Emma Denton), and Margery Cailly. For--wonderful it seems--Margery, who least needed to live, was the one spared of those who were taken with the pestilence. Presently some old sisters returned, and new ones took the place of the departed. But the sword of the pestilence cut off the memory of the old days, and the sins and sufferings, the virtues and the victories of the former sisterhood were a forgotten dream when the cloister filled again. So when Emma Denton passed into her lethargy, and Margery Cailly earnestly petitioned to fill her place in the Sacristy, there was not a sister to question her character and devoutness.