Fully sobered now, understanding of his ghastly error reached him at the gallop.
"My God!" he gasped, and incontinently turned to flee.
But as he fled in horror of his sacrilege, he still kept his head turned, staring over his shoulder at the stately figure of the abbess, either in fascination or with some lingering doubt of what he had seen and heard.

Running thus, he crashed headlong into a pillar, and, stunned by the blow, he reeled and sank unconscious to the ground.
This the troopers had not seen, for they had not lingered.

Understanding on their own part the horrible blunder, they had turned even as their leader turned, and they had raced madly back the way they had come, conceiving that he followed.

And there was reason for their haste other than their anxiety to set a term to the sacrilege of their presence.
From the cloistered garden of the convent uproar reached them, and the metallic voice of Sergeant Flanagan calling loudly for help.
The alarm bell of the convent had done its work.

The villagers were up, enraged by the outrage, and armed with sticks and scythes and bill-hooks, an army of them was charging to avenge this infamy.