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 celebrated, and then my mother presented me to the Hegoumenos.

"I wish my daughter to become the saint's slave," she said.

"For ever?" he asked. "If so, she cannot marry."

"No; until her marriage. Yearly I will pay the saint a pigskin full of oil and a torch as tall as she is. At her marriage I will ransom her with five times this, and with five medjediés in addition."

The monk took me in his arms and raised me up so that I could kiss the icon. Then he cried, in a voice so full of emotion that it made my devout mother weep:

"My Saint, unto thee I give the keeping of this child!"

From the icon he took a silver chain, from which hung a little bell, and placed it round my neck.

"You are now St George's slave," he continued. "Until you return and hang this with your own hands on the icon it must never leave you."

I kissed his hand, and the ceremony was over. We paid what we owed, and left the monastery and good Father Arsenius with the assurance that a power from above was having especial watch over me.

From that time on my mother gave her yearly