Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/273

 was making the ascent, her lighted candle in her hand.

There was a strong draught in the tower, and the feeble flame flickered perilously. Her wrapper caught under her feet as she toiled up the narrow, crooked stairs, and it seemed to her that the sleeping nuns, in their distant wing of the building, must hear the creak of the old boards under even her light weight. But she kept on until she reached the top. There, still clinging to her precious candle with her left hand, she seized the bell-rope in her right. In another moment the solemn clang of the great bell filled every corner of the silent building. She rang slowly and steadily, with a careful imitation of Sister Harmonia's systematic and painstaking method.

Far below, in the cloister wing of the convent, the nuns turned sleepily in their narrow beds. Five o'clock! The night seemed strangely short, and they felt unrefreshed. But no doubt disturbed them. Every morning at five o'clock during all the years of their cloister lives they had risen at the summons of that bell. They dressed drowsily and filed slowly along the halls to the dark, cold convent chapel. Even Sister Italia was among them.

The Imp did not defeat the purpose of her work by overdoing. She was too artistic for