e," supplicated Fouchette, "hear me! Sister Agnes----"

The Superieure was now furious. She rang a little bell, waving Father
Sebastien aside. Two sisters appeared,--her personal attendants, well
known to those who had suffered punishment.

"Give this girl the douche!"

"Madame!" screamed Fouchette.

"Give her the douche--for fighting in the dormitory. In the refectory.
Assemble everybody! And if she resists let her have the paddle. If
that doesn't bring her to her senses, give her five days on bread and
water. I'll take that rebellious spirit out of her or----"

The two women hustled the trembling Fouchette away from the Presence.

Fouchette knew the disgrace of the douche. She had seen grown young
women stripped stark naked before five hundred girls and have a bucket
of ice-cold water thrown over them. One of them had been ill and was
unable to do her work. She had died from the effects.

Fouchette understood the terrible significance of the paddle. A girl
was stripped and strung up by the wrists to a door and was beaten with
a heavy leather strap soaked in brine until the blood ran down her
thighs.

Fouchette comprehended the character of the five days on bread and
water, wherein the victim was forced to remain in her own filth for
five days with nothing to eat but a half-loaf of stale bread and a
small pitcher of water per twenty-four hours.

Yet, dreadful as was this immediate prospect, and as cruel as was the
injustice meted out to her, Fouchette thought only of Sister Agnes.
She would have gone to punishment like a Stoic of old could somebody
have assured her that what she had just heard was false and that
Sister Agnes was yet in the institution. Everything else and all
together seemed dwarfed by the side of this one great overwhelming
calamity.

"How could you have so angered Madame?" said one of her
conductors,--both of whom were aware that she was to be unjustly
punished.

"Be good, now, Fouchette," whispered the other; "besides, it is
nothing,--a little water,--bah!"

They were leading her along a dark corridor, the same through which
she had been taken five years before. It rushed over her now,--dear
Sister Agnes!

"I only wanted to know about Sister Agnes," protested Fouchette.

Her conductors stopped short.

"S-sh! Mademoiselle did not know that----"

"That what?"

"Better tell her, sister," encouraged the other woman.

"That Sister Agnes was--was suspected of being a creature of th