“She turned and pointed toward the road. ‘Do you know who that man is just disappearing behind the two oaks?’ she asked.
“‘It is he whom you lately asked after; it is the Prophet from Nazareth,’ said the man. Then she clasped her hands in astonishment, and tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, thou Holy One! Oh, thou Messenger of God’s power!’ she cried. Thou hast healed me!’
“Then the rider lifted her into the saddle and bore her to the city at the foot of the mountain and went with her to the priests and elders, and told them how he had found her. They questioned her carefully; but when they heard that the maiden was born in the wilderness of diseased parents, they would not believe that she was healed. ‘Go back thither whence you came!’ said they. ‘If you have been ill, you must remain so as long as you live. You must not come here to the city, to infect the rest of us with your disease.’
“She said to them: ‘I know that I am well, for the Prophet from Nazareth hath laid his hand upon my forehead.’
“When they heard this they exclaimed: ‘Who is he, that he should be able to make clean the unclean? All this is but a delusion of the evil spirits. Go back to your own, that you may not bring destruction upon all of us!’
“They would not declare her healed, and they forbade her to remain in the city. They decreed that each and every one who gave her shelter should also be adjudged unclean.
“When the priests had pronounced this judgment, the young maiden turned to the man who had found her in the field: ‘Whither shall I go now? Must I go back again to the lepers in the wilderness?’
“But the man lifted her once more upon his horse, and said to her: ‘No, under no conditions shall you go out to the lepers in their mountain caves, but we two shall travel across the sea to another land, where there are no laws for clean and unclean.’ And they——”
But when the vineyard laborer had got thus far in his narrative, the slave arose and interrupted him. “You need not tell any more,” said he. “Stand up rather and follow me on the way, you who know the mountains, so that I can begin my home journey to-night, and not wait until morning. The Emperor and Faustina can not hear your tidings a moment too soon.”
When the vine-dresser had accompanied the slave, and come home again to the hut, he found his wife still awake.