clearest, faintest azure bending overhead; in the centre of the
aerial landscape the massive walls of the cloister of Pfalzel,
gray to the east, purple to the west; silence over all,--a gentle,
eager, conscious stillness, diffused through the air like perfume,
as if earth and sky were hushing themselves to hear the voice of
the river faintly murmuring down the valley.

In the cloister, too, there was silence at the sunset hour. All
day long there had been a strange and joyful stir among the nuns.
A breeze of curiosity and excitement had swept along the corridors
and through every quiet cell.

The elder sisters,--the provost, the deaconess, the stewardess,
the portress with her huge bunch of keys jingling at her girdle,--
had been hurrying to and fro, busied with household cares. In the
huge kitchen there was a bustle of hospitable preparation. The
little bandy-legged dogs that kept the spits turning before the
fires had been trotting steadily for many an hour, until their
tongues hung out for want of breath. The big black pots swinging
from the cranes had bubbled and gurgled and shaken and sent out
puffs of appetizing steam.

St. Martha was in her element. It was a field-day for her virtues.

The younger sisters, the pupils of the convent, had forsaken their
Latin books and their embroidery-frames, their manuscripts and
their miniatures, and fluttered through the halls in little flocks
like merry snow-birds, all in black and white, chattering and
whispering together. This was no day for tedious task-work, no day
for grammar or arithmetic, no day for picking out illuminated