Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

“To Rome!” exclaimed Baithene. “To the great slave-market!”

And Dewi could not deny that this was their destination.

The brother and sister slept little that night.

“I longed and prayed to go to Rome, sister. And some one must have heard me! Can it be the Friend or the Enemy? For there is an Enemy, you know. We renounced him at our baptism, and no doubt he will do us all the harm he can. And he is strong, they say. It would seem, sometimes, nearly as strong as God!”

“He is weak, they told us!” replied Ethne. “He can only hurt people who give themselves up to him and are cowards. And, brother,” she added, after a long silence, “a beautiful thing has come back into my mind. One of the priests (I think it was Patrick) was speaking to our mother about prayer. He said we must tell all our wants to God. But mother said, ‘How could we dare? we know so little, and we might ask for the wrong thing.’ But he told her, God never gives wrong things when His children ask for them, any more than she would. And then he told her a story about a great saint, I think he was called Paul, who prayed that he might go to Rome; and God heard him, and he went to Rome, but shipwrecked and a prisoner.”

“What comfort is there in that melancholy story, Ethne? It is exactly what I am afraid of!” Baithene said gloomily.

“Do you think the great Paul did not know what he was asking, or the good God what He was giving?” she said. “Hear the end of my story. In his prison in Rome Paul gathered together crowds of people who came to listen to him. And many of them became Christians. And,” she added, after a pause, “in the end he died a martyr at Rome. And that, you know, is the greatest death, they say, that any Christian can die.”

“But that Paul wished to go to Rome to do good,” said Baithene, “to serve his people and God.”

“And so did you, darling,” she replied; “and God has heard.”

“I did not exactly wish to be a martyr,” he replied, “at least not quite yet. I do not feel fit for it. And I did want to learn Latin, and so many things, and to do so many things.”