"But the sisters have not left?" I eagerly asked.
"Not all," he said, "but two or three of them went down this morning."
"Drive on quicker," I replied, "I am in a hurry."
The man gave the horse a crack with his whip, which made no difference whatever in our rate of speed, and said:—
"If you've got a bill agin any of them, sir, you needn't worry. The Mother is still there, and she's all right, you know."
"Bill? Nonsense!" said I.
"I'm sorry they're busted," said the man; "they didn't do much hackin', but they give us a lot of haulin' from the station."
As I hurried up the broad path which led to the front of the House of Martha, I found the door of the main entrance open, something I had never noticed before, although I had often passed the house. I entered unceremoniously, and saw before me, in the hallway, a woman in gray, stooping over a trunk. She turned, at the sound of my footsteps on the bare floor, and I beheld Sister Sarah. Her eyes flashed as she saw me, and I know that her first impulse was to order me out of the house. This of course she now had no right to do, but there were private rights which she still maintained.
"I should think," she said, "that a man who has done all the mischief that you have done, who has worked and planned and plotted and contrived, until he has undermined and utterly ruined the sisterhood of pious women who ask nothing of this world but to be let alone to do their own work in their own way, would be ashamed to put his nose into this house; but I suppose a man who would do what you have done does not know what shame is. Have you come here to sneer and jibe and scorn and mock, and gloat over the misfortunes of the women whose home you have broken up, ruined, and devastated?"
"Madam," said I, "can you tell me where I can find Miss Sylvia Raynor?"