came with his request about the child; I have not yet found courage to
read the rest of it.--What can any letter bring to me but evil! Do you
know at all whence anything pleasant could come to me? But now: read me
the letter. Not that part again about your father; that I will keep till
presently for myself alone."

Orion undid the roll, and with quivering lips glanced over the nun's
accusations against his father. The wildest fanaticism breathed in every
line of this epistle from the martyr's widow. She had found in the
cloister all she sought: she lived now, she said, in God alone and in the
Divine Saviour. She thought of her child, even, only as an alien, one of
God's young creatures for whom it was a joy to pray. At the same time it
was her duty to care for the little one's soul, and if it were not too
hard for her grandmother to part from her, she longed to see Mary once
more. She had lately been chosen abbess of her convent--and no one could
prevent her taking possession of the child; but she feared lest an
overwhelming natural affection might drag her back to the carnal world,
which she had for ever renounced, so she would have Mary brought up in a
neighboring nunnery, and led to Heavenly joys, not to earthly misery--to
be the wife of no sinful husband, but a pure bride of Christ.

Orion shuddered as he read and, when he laid the letter down, his mother
exclaimed:

"Perhaps she is right, perhaps it is already ordained that the child
should be sent to the convent, and not to the leech's friend, and started
on the only path that leads to Heaven without danger or hindrance!"

But Orion said to himself that he would make it his duty to guard the
happy-hearted child from this fate, and he begged his mother to consider