but also five other nuns confined in like
manner, all of whom, on recovering their
liberty, took advantage of the commissary's
presence to quit the establishment and
return to their friends. The case is to
come before the courts of law.

What strikes one in all these instances,
and now, unfortunately, in like events in
England, is that, in four different countries,
widely diverse in all their circumstances—
in Italy, France, Belgium, Great Britain—
the respective stories run almost parallel to
each other.  Convents are the same, wherever
established; convent life may change its
climate, but never its animus. There is
the same capitation, the same interruption
and stifling of family affections, the same
growing dislike between certain members
of the community, the same persecution, at
first petty, then diabolical; the same tension
of the cord, the same final snapping thereof,
either by escape or expulsion—which
become scandalous—or by oubliettes and other
means of "forgetting" and suppressing,
which we may guess at, without deserving
the reproach of wicked inventiveness.

When infatuated persons are weak enough
to believe that they may merit heaven by
making earth hell, we pity them heartily
and sincerely; but we feel something
stronger than pity for those, whose term of
life on earth is made a hell by others, under
the pretext of insuring their entrance to
heaven. Self-inflicted torment we can
regard with compassion; the tormentors
of enthusiastic girls and broken-hearted
women, we ought firmly to suppress,
if possible. True, the oppressors would have
no power but for the fault or the error of
the victims, who place themselves in their
hands. But high-flown young women, we
hope, will now reflect whether the tyranny
they are likely to meet with in the world,
be not preferable to the mercies of a
Reverend Mother Brownrigg; and whether,
after all, it be wise to risk the leap out of a
secular frying-pan into a religious fire.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

BODMIN TO PADSTOW.

AND now the crow, turning away from
civilisation, strikes across the stormy Bodmin
moors, where the ghost of the Cornish wizard
Tregeagle bides his doom, expiates his crime,
and is tormented by the relentless master
whom he served so well. His favourite haunt
is a small Dead Sea, called Dozmare Pool, a
little tarn, eight hundred and ninety feet above
the sea, not far from Brown Willie and the old
tin workings on the Fowey. Wicked Tregeagle
was a dishonest steward of Lord Robartes,
at Landhydrock, where a room in the
house is still called, Tregeagle's. This Sir Giles
Overreach of the Carolan times cheated the
tenants, destroyed papers, forged deeds, and
sold land not his own. He amassed money
enough to purchase the estate of Trevorder, in
St. Breock. Certain it is, he murdered a sister,
an angel who stood between him and his prey,
and his miserable wife and children also fell
victims to his pitiless cruelty. When death
came to strike the monster, who trembled at
his approach, Tregeagle heaped gold on the
priests to sing, and pray, and save him from his
certain doom. Their exorcisms succeeded, he
died, and they laid him at rest in St. Breock
church. But the devil was still watching—a
law-suit arose at Bodmin about some lands, the
title deeds of which Tregeagle had destroyed.

The case was argued over and over; trial
after trial, and yet no result. At last even
lawyers' expedients were exhausted. A final
decision was to be given. Everything turned
on the validity of a certain deed. The counsel
for the defence was in despair. The judge was
about to sum up. The court was hushed, when
the minister of St. Breward entered, leading
the corpse of Tregeagle. There was a shudder
of horror when counsel, pale, but still brazen,
commenced an exhaustive cross-examination
of the unjust steward. The result proved a system
of complicated fraud, of which the honest
defendant had been the victim, and the trembling
jury gave a unanimous and speedy verdict in
his favour.

Now came the difficulty about laying the
ghost of the dreadful witness. He kept
following the defendant everywhere, and
rendering his newly-gained property a burden to him.
The lawyers and priests at last united their
cunning, and devised a plan. They would set
Tregeagle a purgatorial task, during which
he might slowly repent, and during the
performance of which he was safe from the Devil's
claws. He should drain Dozmare, a tidal and
bottomless pool. Drain it moreover, proposed
a sly curate, with a limpet shell with a hole in
it. He worked hard in that desolate place,
and on stormy winter nights was heard howling
at the hopelessness of his eternal task. The
storms and lightnings tried to drive him from his
labour, and then, if he rested for a moment, he
was chased by the Devil and all his hounds to
the Roche Rocks, where he obtained respite by
ramming his head through the east window of
St. Michael's chapel, where hermit lepers once
dwelt.

For some reason not quite decided,
Tregeagle got tired of Dozmare Pool, and was then
sent to the north coast, near Padstow, to make
trusses and ropes of sand. The moment he had
packed and twisted them, the breakers came and
rolled them level. Daughters of the Danaides!
it was positively unbearable. The inhabitants
of Padstow, maddened by his howlings, sent for
St. Petrock to remove the monster to anywhere
on the southern coast, out of hearing.

St. Petrock deposited his encumbrance on