“Stand back, there within, stand back for your lives! We now blow your door in.—Stand back!”
“’Tis Cousin Lionel’s voice,” whispered Diana, with white lips.
“Sho!” returned the old lady, with great contempt. She caught Diana by the shoulder and dragged her to the entrance of the passage, where she paused, panting, being somewhat weighty for such swift movements. Bindon, trailing a musket, clattered in their rear.
“Aye, truly,” she said to him, “I begin to think this may be the end. Tut! Where lag those sluggard guards? Sho! Here now come my silly children!—Well, well, Sister Magdalen, my pastoral staff! So we have visitors we shall receive in state.”
She took the crook from the hands of the nun; then, waving back the community, terrified now even to speechlessness:—
“Back to your stalls, daughters! Shame on you! Shall not the shepherd come when he pleases, and shall he find the sheep dispersed?”
She rang her staff threateningly on the flags, and the fluttering bevy fled back to the chapel. “Sheep, indeed—poor things!” chuckled the Abbess.
She was chuckling still when the thud of the explosion came.
It seemed to lift the stone house about them, to make the solid flags heave under their feet. For one instant Diana deemed that they all had been blown in pieces as well as the convent; and, opening her eyes after a reeling moment, was considerably astonished to find herself whole and sound. Before her, in stout equilibrium, was the Abbess, jubilantly chanting a psalm; beside her, Bindon on one knee, poising his firelock. The words he was breathing were not those of prayer.