darkness came I felt the water drawing me. The first night I fought
on my bed and held out; but the second I crept to her door. She made
no motion when I entered, but rose up secretly and stole after me;
and the second night she warned the Abbess, and the two came on me
as I stood by the tank.

I was punished with terrible penances: fasting, scourging,
imprisonment, and the privation of drinking water; for the Abbess
stood amazed at the obduracy of my sin, and was resolved to make me
an example to my fellows. For a month I endured the pains of hell;
then one night the Saracen pirates fell on our convent. On a sudden
the darkness was full of flames and blood; but while the other nuns
ran hither and thither, clinging to the Abbess's feet or shrieking
on the steps of the altar, I slipped through an unwatched postern
and made my way to the hills. The next day the Emperor's soldiery
descended on the carousing heathen, slew them and burned their
vessels on the beach; the Abbess and nuns were rescued, the convent
walls rebuilt, and peace restored to the holy precincts. All this I
heard from a shepherdess of the hills, who found me in my hiding,
and brought me honeycomb and water. In her simplicity she offered to
lead me home to the convent; but while she slept I laid off my
wimple and scapular, and stealing her cloak fled away lest she
should betray me. And since then I have wandered alone over the face
of the world, living in woods and desert places, often hungry, often
cold and sometimes fearful; yet resigned to any hardship, and with a
front for any peril, if only I may sleep under the free heaven and
wash the dust from my body in cool water.