“Is Rome safe from the Huns?” he said doubtfully.
“I do not know about the Huns,” she replied, “that is all so new. The Goths and the Celts seem to be leaving Rome alone just now.”
There was a pause. They were becoming sleepy. But before they settled to slumber Baithene said—
“Do they know anything of the other Testament of God? Do they believe in Christ our Lord?”
“I am afraid not,” she replied sorrowfully, “at all events not Eleazar. You see, it was the Christians who robbed him of his child.”
“But Miriam?” he asked.
“When I spoke to her of Him,” Ethne replied, “she said He seemed to have been very good, not like most Christians. She did even say hesitatingly and timidly, looking round as if she were afraid her husband might hear, that she sometimes wished their people could have understood how good He was, and what He was, in time; it might, she thought, have made everything different; but now it seemed too late for them.”
“It is never too late, in this life, at least. You remember Patrick says so in that letter we heard in the cave; not even for apostate Christians, he said; not even for Coroticus and those wicked pirates, who slew or kidnapped Patrick’s newly-baptized sons and daughters, and us among them.”
“Let us say the Lord’s Prayer together,” said Ethne, “and try to put Coroticus and Eleazar and their trespasses into it, with all the rest.”
They rose and knelt hand in hand, and prayed, and then lay down again and fell asleep.