The old chapel door wouldn't yield to her shoulder. She heard her father's mocking laughter. "You're stupid. That door has withstood three centuries. What made you think a weakling like you could knock it in...?'

She gave one more push and immediately heard her father's laughter grow.

"Now if it had been your brother, though younger than you, he might have budged it. Or at least he would have found another way to get in."

Another way - why didn't she think of that? Screwing her eyes in the pitch dark and shivering from the piercing cold she made her way to the back of the chapel. She must get in, she must. She was sure she would find some money there. She had seen her mother surreptitiously pass a few notes to the monk often enough when her father wasn't around.

She needed the money. Her boyfriend had told her she would have to start buying her own now that she liked the weed so much. He wasn't going to roll any more joints for her.

"But I don't have enough money," she lamented.

"Who does!" he grunted. "Do you think we grow it? If we could grow anything it would be the weed, anyhow."

She had felt he was being unfair. He had introduced her to spliffs. He had called her a sissy when she refused to go beyond petting and all the way with him. He said he didn't know what he saw in her, plenty of girls would gratify him if he as much as winked at them.

"You're a sissy..."

"I'm not! I want some time, that's all, I've never done it. If my father caught me, he would kill me."

"Or he might say that at least you have some nerve!"

That had hit home. Her father was always on at her about how useless and spineless she was.

"Get a life," jeered her boyfriend. "If you don't, I will. I told you, plenty of other girls around who would be happy to do it."

"Some more time," she had begged.

"Huh! Good thing I have this to fill my time."

Like he had done other times before he rolled himself a spliff, lit it, puffed deeply and contentedly.

"I suppose you'll continue to say no to this as well."

She made up her mind. "Give me a puff," she said.

That's how it had started. And now she craved for it more and more.

The chapel had a window, with a flicker of light behind it. She saw it was a height up, but also that it had a glass opening. Somehow she clambered up, pushed at the window and when it wouldn't open, either, she desperately tacked her cardigan down, made a fist and knocked the glass in. She quickly clambered over the sill and jumped in.

As she landed she felt something trickling down her hand and, to her horror, she saw it was blood. A jagged shard was sticking out of her wrist. She tried to stem the blood.

She felt the inside of the chapel taking all sorts of spinning shapes but in each one she saw where the light she had seen from the window was coming from. It was a solitary candle, lit before a boy-child figure lying on a bed of straw surrounded by tins with vetch growing from them.

She tried to squeeze her eyes but they fell closed even as fear of what her father would do to her gripped her.

It was the sound of a small voice that brought her back, one that sounded more like chimes than anything else.

"Don't be afraid," it said.

"But I am," she cried, "you don't know what my father is like."

"I know all the sorts," said the voice, and to her surprise she saw it was the boy-child's. "I know what you were trying to do."

"I wanted money," she said, "to show I'm not a sissy..."

"To smoke marijuana..."

"Yes," she said, not asking how a child knew that. "To keep my father and also to show my father. My brother smokes it, too, why shouldn't I, just because my father thinks I have no guts, just because he hates me because a girl was his first born instead of a boy!"

A long sigh came before the reply. "Your father is wrong. But you don't right a wrong with another wrong..."

She felt an angry flush and was about to reply. Then, squeezing her eyes, she saw that the little boy on the bed of straw was smiling at her.

"How can a child like you talk about right and wrong?" she mumbled, feeling dizzy again.

"Because I came to right wrong. Right is my mission," chimed the boy gently as his smile grew.

The girl felt herself wrapped in its warmth.

In the morning the monk who looked after the chapel jumped out of his skin when he found a girl lying unconscious in front of the humble crib he put up each year.

He recognised her, for her mother was a benefactor. She and her husband rushed over the moment he telephoned her. The father spoke sharply at first but his wife gave him an unusual stern look.

"Shouldn't you be thankful we've found her alive," she cried, stooping to gather the girl to her. "You drove her to this.'

As always in matters that concerned his daughter, anger welled up in the man. He opened his mouth to show it. But before he could speak he felt the eyes of the boy in the crib upon his. He stopped, struck by the reproach in the boy's intense look, by the question 'Why, why?' on his lips.

And the man felt an unaccustomed embarrassment take hold of him and was ashamed of what he had been about to say.