they sought to
build their hermitage proved more than they could handle, and their
knowledge of mason-work was about as imperfect as had been their
familiarity with crusading and the country of the Moors. "The stones
that we piled one upon another," wrote Theresa herself in later years,
"immediately fell down, and so it came to pass that we found no means of
accomplishing our wish."

The pluck and piety, however, that set this conscientious and
sympathetic little girl to such impossible tasks were certain to blossom
into something equally hard and unselfish when she grew to womanhood.
And so it proved. Her much-loved but romance-reading mother died when
she was twelve years old, and Theresa felt her loss keenly.

She was a very clever and ambitious girl, and with a mother's guiding
hand removed she became impatient under the restraints which her
stern old father, Don Alphonso, placed upon her. At sixteen she was an
impetuous, worldly-minded, and very vain though very dignified young
lady. Then her father, fearful as to her future, sent her to a convent,
with orders that she should be kept in strict seclusion.

Such a punishment awoke all the feelings of conscientiousness and
self-conviction that had so influenced her when she was a little girl,
and Theresa, left to her own thoughts, first grew morbid, and then fell
sick.

During her sickness she resolved to become a nun, persuaded her
ever-faithful brother, Pedro, to become a friar, and when Don Alphonso,
their father, refused his consent, the brother and sister, repeating the
folly of their childhood, again ran away from home.

Then their father, seeing the uselessness of resistance, consented, and
Theresa, at the age of twenty, entered a convent in Avila, and became a
nun in what was known as the Order of the Carmelites.

The life of these nuns was strict, secluded, and silent; but the
conscientious nature of Theresa found even the severities of this lonely
life not sufficiently hard, and attaining to a position of influence in
the order she obtained permission from the Pope in 1562 to found a new
order which should be even more strict in its rules, and therefore, so
she believed, more helpful. Thus was founded the Order of Barefooted
Carmelites, a body of priests and nuns, who have in their peculiar way
accomplished very much for charity, gentleness, and self-help in the
world, and whose schools and convents have been instituted in all parts
of the earth.