With this answer, betraying not only his superiority to the Greylands world in general, but his inward bravery, and a mutual goodnight, they parted. John going up the hill with his basket; Miss Castlemaine turning towards the Nunnery, and pondering deeply. Strange, perhaps, to say, considering the state Jack Tuff was avowedly in that eventful night, a conviction that his sight had not deceived him, had taken hold of her. That some mystery did attach to that night, independent of the disappearance of Anthony, she had always fancied: and this evidence only served to confirm it. Many a time the thought had arisen in her mind, but only to be driven back again, that her uncle was not as open in regard to that night's doings as he ought to be. Had it been possible that such an accusation, such a suspicion, whether openly made or only implied, had been brought against herself, she should have stood boldly forth to confront her accusers and assert her innocence, have taken Heaven to witness to it, if needs were. He had not done this; he had never spoken of it voluntarily, good or bad; in short, he shunned the subject--and it left an unsatisfactory impression. What should Mr. Castlemaine want in the chapel ruins at that midnight hour?--what could he want? But if it was he who went in why did he deny it? Put it that it was really Mr. Castlemaine, why then the inference was that he must know what became of Anthony. It seemed very strange altogether; a curious, unaccountable, mysterious affair. Mary felt it to be so. Not that she lost an iota of faith in her uncle; she seemed to trust him as she would have trusted her father; but her mind was troubled, her brain was in a chaos of confusion. In some such confusion as she stepped bodily into a minute later. At the gate of the Nunnery she found herself in the midst of a small crowd, a small excited number of people who were running up and jostled her. Women were crying and panting, girls were pushing: a man with some object covered up in his arms, was in the midst. When the garb of Miss Castlemaine was recognized in the gloom as that of the Grey Sisters, all fell respectfully back. "What is amiss, good people!" asked Sister Mary Ursula. And a faint moan of sympathy escaped her as she heard the answer. Polly Gleeson, one of Tim Gleeson's numerous little ones, had set her night-gown on fire and was terribly burnt. Tim was somewhere abroad, as usual: but another man had offered to bring the child to the Grey Ladies--the usual refuge for accidents and sickness.