Late in the evening Baithene came with a cart to the door of the house where Eleazar was sojourning; he asked to be allowed to bring in a young Roman officer who had recognized him. True to the hospitality of their race and their religion, Eleazar and Miriam would not refuse. Was not Abraham, “the father of the faithful,” also the “father of guests”? Had he not received the heathen stranger into his house? yet had not the Almighty been more merciful than Abraham, rebuking the patriarch for not tolerating the imperfect worship of his heathen guest? The Romans had indeed destroyed Jerusalem, but this wounded Roman must be welcomed as a guest from God, and the guest-chamber was made ready for him.
The stranger was Marius, whose wounds were more severe than he had chosen to report in his letters to his family.
For the first day he lay quite still, weak from loss of blood; but Miriam’s homely skill in nursing and preparing food for the sick proved of good service, and on the third morning he was able to creep out with Baithene and Ethne to the church. On the way they told him of the rescue of Troyes from the plunder of Attila’s host through the intercession of Lupus, and how the aged Bishop had given himself up to the Huns for his people.
By degrees the whole story of the Irish captives became clear to him: the baptism by Patrick, the father’s rank as a chieftain among his people, their capture by British pirates, their hearing of the letter of Patrick to Coroticus, their purchase by Eleazar the Jew, their interview with the friendly monk at Tours, and his letters to Bishop Anianus of Orleans and Bishop Lupus of Troyes.
His heart went out to them as captive nobles, in their own land of a house as ancient as his own; as in unjust bondage to a Hebrew, yet so far legally his, that except legally they could not be set free; and above all as Christians, Catholic Christians of the old faith, yet in some way of the old faith in a new way, so fervent, and simple, and unaware of all the controversies that had for many worn its poetry into prose; glowing with a Christian faith that seemed in some unspeakable way steeped anew in the freshness of dawn, baptized into the death and life of Christ the Lord. So, during those days in the house together, the sweet household way and gracious services of Ethne stole into his inmost heart and took possession of it before he was aware. She was like his mother, yet unlike, as the rose of dawn to the tender glow of evening.
At last the day came when Marius had to leave with his detachment. The day before he left he was trying to console Ethne for the loss of Bishop Lupus.
“He is not lost,” she said, with a triumphant smile in her dark-grey eyes. “Attila will not harm him.”
“Your heart has room even for the Hun,” he replied, remembering his first sight of her beside the dying boy at Orleans.
“The Huns are terrible heathen, I fear,” she said, “but they do seem to know the saints of God when they see them. At least they are not what Patrick calls apostate Christians.”