or not after his way, he glossed it over with great good-will.

The road which we were following, and which this stalwart father had made
with his own two hands within the space of a year, came to a corner, and
showed us some white buildings a little farther on beyond the wood. At
the same time, the bell once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the
monastery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) stopped
me.

'I must not speak to you down there,' he said. 'Ask for the Brother
Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as you go out again
through the wood, where I may speak to you. I am charmed to have made
your acquaintance.'

And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, and crying out
twice, 'I must not speak, I must not speak!' he ran away in front of me,
and disappeared into the monastery door.

I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way to revive my
terrors. But where one was so good and simple, why should not all be
alike? I took heart of grace, and went forward to the gate as fast as
Modestine, who seemed to have a disaffection for monasteries, would
permit. It was the first door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had
not shown an indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form,
though with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaller, and
a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke with me a
while. I think my sack was the great attraction; it had already beguiled
the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had charged me on my life to show it
to the Father Prior. But whether it was my address, or the sack, or the
idea speedily published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on