"Here, then, is the hitch in the case. The
young lady sets out with a certain object before
her. Instead of going on to the accomplishment
to that object, she stops short of it. Why has
she stopped? and where? Those are, unfortunately,
just the questions which we can't answer
yet.

"My own opinion of the matter is briefly
as follows:—I don't think she has met with
any serious accident. Serious accidents, in nine
cases out of ten, discover themselves. My own
notion is, that she has fallen into the hands of
some person, or persons, interested in hiding
her away, and sharp enough to know how to
set about it. Whether she is in their charge,
with or without her own consent, is more than
I can undertake to say at present. I don't
wish to raise false hopes or false fears; I
wish to stop short at the opinion I have given
already.

"In regard to the future, I may tell you that
I have left one of my men in daily communication
with the authorities. I have also taken care to
have the handbills offering a reward for the
discovery of her, more widely circulated. Lastly,
I have completed the necessary arrangements for
seeing the playbills of all country theatres, and
for having the dramatic companies well looked
after. Some years since this would have cost a
serious expenditure of time and money. Luckily
for our purpose, the country theatres are in a bad
way. Excepting the large cities, hardly one of
them is open; and we can keep our eye on them,
with little expense, and less difficulty.

"These are the steps which I think it needful
to take at present. If you are of another
opinion, you have only to give me your directions,
and I will carefully attend to the same. I
don't by any means despair of our finding the
young lady, and bringing her back to her friends
safe and well. Please to tell them so; and
allow me to subscribe myself,

"Yours respectfully,

"ABRAHAM BULMER."

V

ANONYMOUS LETTER ADDRESSED TO MR.
PENDRIL.

"SIR,—A word to the wise. The friends of
a certain young lady are wasting time and
money, to no purpose. Your confidential clerk
and your detective policeman are looking for a
needle in a bottle of hay. This is the ninth of
October, and they have not found her yet:
they will as soon find the North-West Passage.
Call your dogs off; and you may hear of the
young lady's safety, under her own hand. The
longer you look for her, the longer she will
remain, what she is now—lost."

[The preceding letter is thus endorsed, in
Mr. Pendril's handwriting:—"No apparent
means of tracing the enclosed to its source.
Post-mark, ' Charing-cross.' Stationer's stamp
cut off the inside of the envelope. Handwriting,
probably a man's, in disguise. Writer,
whoever he is, correctly informed. No further
trace of the younger Miss Vanstone discovered
yet."]

THE POLITE WORLD'S NUNNERY.

IN some parts of North Germany the
suppression of monasteries has diverted their funds
not into the hands of the State, nor into great
hospitals, nor into school endowments, but to
the use of modified nunneries, Protestant of
course, and devoted to the particular solace of
persons of condition: a sort of fashionable
almshouses for unmarried ladies of high rank. Such
ladies have comfortable apartments in the cloister,
a handsome income out of its revenue, and
a position in society as easy as that of a married
woman. They are called canonesses. Each
secularised nunnery, founded by noble families
whose descendants have especial right of
entrance, maintains a certain number of ladies,
who are elected from a list of candidates whenever,
by marriage or death, vacancies occur.
In addition to the family claim and the entrance
by vote, the abbess, who attains her own
power, which is absolute, by free election of
the sisterhood, has a fixed number of
independent nominations, and so has the sovereign
of the country. Whether poor or rich,
nobody may become a canoness who is not of noble
blood. In some cloisters, nobility for sixteen
generations old, is an indispensable condition of
sisterhood.

On the wide moors and dreary plains of
North Germany the approach to a cloister
is marked by a change of scenery, at the least
from poverty of soil, to a show of wealth and
luxury. One of these institutions, in which
the writer lived for many years, was on a
vast bleak heath over which, before the time
of railways, men travelled for days seeing
nothing but heath, herbage, and dwarf firs, with
here and there some fields of buckwheat, oats,
or rye, around villages of a dozen low thatched
cottages. The villagers, who are rich, become
so chiefly by the keeping of bees and sheep.

Our cloister was Heilthal, the oasis in
such a desert. It had been built near to a
rivulet. There were rich pastures, wooded
hills, splendid chesnut avenues, and a large
forest chiefly of beech and oak, besides two
smaller woods of fir, birch, and lime trees.
Amidst all this, lay the cloister, an old majestic
building with a dozen pretty residences clustering
about it in gardens, some on the rivulet
side, half hidden behind trees. There was a
village of old Heilthal within an hour's walk,
and legend said that the cloister had been
originally built there, many hundred years
ago. The original nunnery, however, was burnt
down, and when it was being rebuilt with
increased magnificence, the arch enemy fought in
vain against the holy labour. The day of the
consecration was at hand, after which he would
lose all power against the work. He resolved,
therefore, to destroy the abbey, by pouring down
upon it large pieces of rock during the night