rmit.

And again and again she called out on Christ to stop this thing and
prove Himself a real God to a pagan world that mocked Him.

Dishevelled, her rent veil in tatters on her naked shoulders, she
sprang across the chapel to the crypt door, shook it, tore at it,
seized chair after chair and shattered them to splinters against the
solid panels of oak and iron.

Then, suddenly motionless, she crouched and listened.

"Oh, Mother of God!" she panted, "intervene now--_now_!--or never!"

The muffled rattle of a rather ragged volley answered her prayer.

Outside the convent a sentry--a Kronstadt sailor--stood. He also heard
the underground racket. He nodded contentedly to himself. Other shots
followed--pistol shots--singly.

After a few moments a wisp of smoke from the crypt crept lazily out of
the low oubliettes. The day was grey and misty; rain threatened; and
the rifle smoke clung low to the withered grass, scarcely lifting.

The sentry lighted a third cigarette, one eye on the barred
oubliettes, from which the smoke crawled and spread out over the
grass.

After a while a sweating face appeared behind the bars and a
half-stifled voice demanded why there was any delay about fetching
quick-lime. And, still clinging to the bars with bloody fingers, he
added:

"There's a damned novice in the chapel. I promised to cut her throat
for her. Go in and get her and bring her down here."

* * * * *

The novice was nowhere to be found.

* * * * *

They searched the convent thoroughly; they went out into the garden
and beat the shrubbery, kicking through bushes and saplings, their
cocked rifles poised for a snap shot.

Peasants, gathering there more thickly now, watched them stupidly; the
throng increased in the convent grounds. Some Bolshevik soldiers
pushed through the rapidly growing crowd and ran toward a birch wood
east of the convent. Beyond the silvery fringe of birches, larger
trees of a heavy, hard-wood forest loomed. Among these splendid trees
a number of beeches were being felled on both sides of the road.

"Did you see a White Nun run this way?" demanded the soldiers of the
wood-cutters. The latter shook their heads:

"Nothing has passed," they said seriously, "except some Ural Cossacks
riding north like lost souls in a hurricane."

An officer of the Red battalion, who had now hastened up with pistol
swinging, flew i