Arriving at a rural monastery, the monk Ambrosius meets a young girl called Benedicta, shunned by the local community for being the daughter of the local hangman. Ambrosius is drawn into a dangerous friendship with her and, in defiance of the community and his superiors, he starts spending time alone with her. But when her virtue is corrupted by an impetuous young man, the stage is set for a battle between body and spirit, the sins of the past and the desire for redemption. Allegedly a rewriting from a lost German original, Ambrose Bierce's 1892 novel reads as a seamless, almost folk-tale-like masterpiece.