Eleazar was not altogether pleased at this addition to the family circle; but Miriam welcomed them as her father Abraham might of old. The fire was lit, and cakes of flour were laid on it, and shared with the hungry peasants. The children were evidently quite at home. They ran up to the cradle, and for the moment all their sorrows were blotted out at the discovery of their own lost toys; and soon all slept, except Ethne and the mother, who held a whispered conversation.
“What will you do to-morrow night?” Ethne asked, a royal instinct of providing for others always deep in her heart.
“Perhaps we may creep back home again,” the woman said.
At first she seemed afraid to say more; but no one could hesitate long to confide in Ethne. And soon her story came out.
“The Huns are gone,” Ethne said, “and the Romans and Goths are pursuing them.”
But that scarcely seemed to comfort the poor mother. She explained that though the Huns were their worst enemies, as they destroyed their crops and burnt their homes, still, whoever ruled, they, the peasants, were always slaves, sure to be compelled to work as hard and live on as little as possible, whether the masters were Goths or Romans; and it seemed that in some respects the Roman tax-gatherers were the worst oppressors of all, because they understood best how to wring out the last farthing.
Then, seeing Ethne’s sympathetic distress, she took to comforting her in turn, and confided to her that her husband and the men of the family were in hiding not far off, and that they had little secret storehouses of fruits and grain. She told her also of a wonderful old man, who lived alone in a cave of the forest, and spoke of the good Lord and Saviour, and baptized the little ones and taught them, and sometimes gathered them together for the Holy Eucharist. And so Ethne was comforted.
At last they reached the river Seine, and found a few frightened boatmen willing to row them up to Troyes, which they reached in safety on the fourth evening after they left Orleans. There Eleazar found his friends, but received a scant welcome.
“Why came you hither?” they said. “Of what use is it to be at the meeting-place of roads going in every direction, when the stations on all the roads are abandoned, and many of the roads themselves broken up? The Huns are pushing on through the country. Some of their horsemen galloped past the town yesterday, and to-morrow we may be overwhelmed by the whole flying host.”
The wilful old man was convinced for once that he had made a mistake, but he said—