are under the door-mat in my cell,
but I am a sound sleeper." He smiled seraphically, and winked casually
as he sipped his port. "We will call it, if you please--a penance."

John threw himself in an agony of remorse and shame at the feet of the
Superior. "It isn't of myself I'm thinking," he confessed wildly, "but
of that poor young man, Brother Bones, in the next cell to mine. He is
a living skeleton, has got only one lung and an atrophied brain. A
night out might do him good."

The Father Superior frowned. "Do you know who he is?"

"No."

"His real name is Jones. Why do you start? You have heard it before?"

John had started, thinking of Jinny Jones, Golly's deserted and
self-immolated friend.

"It is an uncommon name," he stammered--"for a monastery, I mean."

"He is or was an uncommon man!" said the Superior gravely. "But," he
added resignedly, "we cannot pick and choose our company here. Most of
us have done something and have our own reasons for this retreat.
Brother Polygamus escaped here from the persecutions of his sixth wife.
Even I," continued the Superior with a gentle smile, putting his feet
comfortably on the mantelpiece, "have had my little fling, and the dear
boys used to say--ahem!--but this is mere worldly vanity. You alone,
my dear son," he went on with slight severity, "seem to be wanting in
some criminality, or--shall I say?--some appropriate besetting sin to
qualify you for this holy retreat. An absolutely gratuitous and
blameless idiocy appears to be your only peculiarity, and for this you
must do penance. From this day henceforth, I make you doorkeeper! Go
on with your shoveling at present, and shut the door behind you;
there's a terrible draught in these corridors."

For three days John Gale underwent an agony of doubt and determination,
and it still snowed in Bishopsgate Street.

On the fourth evening he went to Brother Bones.

"Would you like to have an evening out?"

"I would," said Brother Bones.

"What would you do?"

"I would go to see my remaining sister." His left eyelid trembled
slowly in his cadaverous face.

"But if you should hear she was ruined like the other? What would you
do?"

A shudder passed over the man. "I have not got my little knife," he
said vacantly.

True, he had not! The Brotherhood had no pockets,--or rather only a
corporate one, which belonged to the Superior. John Gale lifted his
eyes in sublime exaltation. "You shall go out,"