tub of cold water." He nudged Gerard
and winked his eye knowingly. "Nothing he hates and dreads like seeing
us monks at our orisons up to our chins in cold water. For corpus domat
aqua. So now go confess thy little trumpery sins, pardonable in youth
and secularity, and leave me to mine, sweet to me as honey, and to be
expiated in proportion."

Gerard bowed his head, but could not help saying, "Where shall I find a
confessor more holy and clement?"

"In each of these cells," replied the monk simply (they were now in the
corridor) "there, go to Brother Anselm, yonder."

Gerard followed the monk's direction, and made for a cell; but the doors
were pretty close to one another, and it seems he mistook; for just
as he was about to tap, he heard his old friend crying to him in an
agitated whisper, "Nay! nay! nay!" He turned, and there was the monk
at his cell-door, in a strange state of anxiety, going up and down
and beating the air double-handed, like a bottom sawyer. Gerard really
thought the cell he was at must be inhabited by some dangerous wild
beast, if not by that personage whose presence in the convent had been
so distinctly proclaimed. He looked back inquiringly and went on to the
next door. Then his old friend nodded his head rapidly, bursting in a
moment into a comparatively blissful expression of face, and shot back
into his den. He took his hour-glass, turned it, and went to work on his
regalles; and often he looked up, and said to himself, "Well-a-day, the
sands how swift they run when the man is bent over earthly toys."

Father Anselm was a venerable monk, with an ample head, and a face all
dignity and love. Therefore Gerard in confessing to him, and replying to
his gentle though searching questions, could not help thinking, "Here is
a head!--Oh dear! oh dear! I wonder whether you will let me draw it when
I have done confessing." And so his own head got confused, and he forgot
a crime or two. However, he did not lower the bolstering this time,
nor was he so uncandid as to detract from the pagan character of the
bolstered.

The penance inflicted was this: he was to enter the convent church, and
prostrating himself, kiss the lowest step of the altar three times;
then kneeling on the floor, to say three paternosters and a credo: "this
done, come back to me on the instant."

Accordingly, his short mortification performed, Gerard returned, and
found Father Anselm spreading plaster.

"After the soul the body,