g in him. It began to penetrate his obfuscated
mind that perhaps he had been rash, that this forcible rape of a convent
was a serious matter. Therefore he attempted this peaceful explanation.

From that huddled group a figure rose, and advanced with a solemn,
stately grace. There was a faint swish of robes, the faint rattle
of rosary beads. Something about that figure caught the lieutenant's
attention sharply. He craned forward, half sobered by the sudden fear
that clutched him, his eyes bulging in his face.

"I had thought," said a gentle, melancholy woman's voice, "that the
seals of a nunnery were sacred to British soldiers."

For a moment Mr. Butler seemed to be labouring for breath. Fully sobered
now, understanding of his ghastly error reached him at the gallop.

"My God!" he gasped, and incontinently turned to flee.

But as he fled in horror of his sacrilege, he still kept his head
turned, staring over his shoulder at the stately figure of the abbess,
either in fascination or with some lingering doubt of what he had seen
and heard. Running thus, he crashed headlong into a pillar, and, stunned
by the blow, he reeled and sank unconscious to the ground.

This the troopers had not seen, for they had not lingered. Understanding
on their own part the horrible blunder, they had turned even as their
leader turned, and they had raced madly back the way they had come,
conceiving that he followed. And there was reason for their haste other
than their anxiety to set a term to the sacrilege of their presence.
From the cloistered garden of the convent uproar reached them, and the
metallic voice of Sergeant Flanagan calling loudly for help.

The alarm bell of the convent had done its work. The villagers were
up, enraged by the outrage, and armed with sticks and scythes and
bill-hooks, an army of them was charging to avenge this infamy. The
troopers reached the close no more than in time. Sergeant Flanagan, only
half understanding the reason for so much anger, but understanding that
this anger was very real and very dangerous, was desperately defending
the horses with his two companions against the vanguard of the
assailants. There was a swift rush of the dragoons and in an instant
they were in the saddle, all but the lieutenant, of whose absence they
were suddenly made conscious. Flanagan would have gone back for him, and
he had in fact begun to issue an order with that object when a sudden
surge of the swelling, roaring cr