arrangements for crossing the frontier. He is to come for the letters
that I have written to the Duc de Langeais and the Marquis de
Beauseant, asking them to find some way of taking you out of this
dreadful country, and away from the death or the misery that waits for
you here."

"But are you not going to follow us?" the nuns cried under their
breath, almost despairingly.

"My post is here where the sufferers are," the priest said simply, and
the women said no more, but looked at their guest in reverent
admiration. He turned to the nun with the wafers.

"Sister Marthe," he said, "the messenger will say _Fiat Voluntas_
in answer to the word _Hosanna_."

"There is some one on the stairs!" cried the other nun, opening a
hiding-place contrived in the roof.

This time it was easy to hear, amid the deepest silence, a sound
echoing up the staircase; it was a man's tread on the steps covered
with dried lumps of mud. With some difficulty the priest slipped into
a kind of cupboard, and the nun flung some clothes over him.

"You can shut the door, Sister Agathe," he said in a muffled voice.

He was scarcely hidden before three raps sounded on the door. The holy
women looked into each other's eyes for counsel, and dared not say a
single word.