Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/274

 that. The bell tolled exactly the usual number of strokes. Then she crept down the stairs and along the corridors and, softly, into her own dormitory and her little bed. The girls still slept peacefully, for the five o'clock summons meant nothing to them. It was not till agitated footsteps sounded in the halls outside, and voices were heard, and the door of the dormitory opened to admit an excited band of nuns that any of them awakened. Then they sat up with a pleasant thrill of expectation. Of course it was the Imp. What had she been doing now?

In the minds of the entire community the same culprit had been unerringly arraigned. It must be the Imp. Who else would have called them up at midnight for five o'clock mass. Who else would have dared to break open the door of the tower? Sister Harmonia, the first to see the fraud, had hastened to give the alarm that something was wrong, and a number of the Sisters had gone with her to the tower and found the candle-grease and the burned matches and the open door.

The majority of the Sisters went humiliatedly back to bed. The matter was serious, of course, but nothing could be done that night. A few came with Sister Italia to the dormitory and turned their steps to the bed where the