bess, in alarm.

"I'm going to tell you! Oh, give me time! It is stupefying! It is
annihilating! The poor gentleman who has just shot himself through the
body!" gasped Sister Francoise, losing her breath again after this
effort.

"A gentleman shot himself!" echoed Salome, in consternation.

The abbess, pale as death, said not a word, but left the unnerved sister
to the care of Salome, and went out to see what had really happened.

She met the little Sister Felecitie in the passage.

"What is all this, my daughter?" she inquired, in a very low voice.

"They have taken him into the refectory, madam. That was the nearest to
the gate, where it happened. It happened just outside the south gate,
madam. They took off a leaf of the gate, and laid him on it and brought
him in," answered the trembling little novice, rather incoherently.

"Daughter, I have often admonished you that you must not address me as
'madam,' but as 'mother.'"

"I beg your pardon, holy mother; but I was so frightened, I forgot."

"Now tell me quickly, and clearly, what happened near the south gate?"

"Oh, madam!--holy mother, I mean!--the suicide! the suicide!"

"The suicide! It was not an accident, then, but a suicide?" exclaimed the
abbess, aghast, and pausing in her hurried walk toward the refectory.

"Oh, madam--holy mother!--yes, so they say! It is enough to kill one to
see it all!"

"Go into my room, child, and stay there with Sister Francoise until I
return. Such sights are too trying for such as you," said the abbess, as
she parted from the young novice, and hurried on toward the refectory.

CHAPTER XLVI.

RETRIBUTION.

She entered the long dining-hall, where a terrible sight met her eyes.

Stretched upon the table lay a man in the midst of a pool of his own
blood!

In the room were gathered a crowd, consisting of three Englishmen, three
gend'armes, several countrymen, several out-door servants of the convent,
and half a hundred nuns and novices.

The crowd had parted a little on the side nearest the door by which the
abbess entered, so as to permit the approach of an old man who seemed to
be a physician, and who proceeded to unbutton the wounded man's coat and
vest, and to examine his wound.

"How horrible! Is he quite dead?" inquired the abbess, making her way to
the side of the village surgeon, for such the old man was.

"No, madam; he has fainted from loss of blood. The wound has stopped
bleeding now, however, a