ty's sake, and Sirona's voice had a friendly ring in it as she bid
Hermas good-morning and asked him how his father was, and whether the
senator's medicine had been of service. The youth's answers were short
and confused, but his looks betrayed that he would fain have said quite
other things than those which his indocile tongue allowed him to
reiterate timidly.

"Dame Dorothea was telling me last evening," she said kindly, "that
Petrus had every hope of your father's recovery, but that he is still
very weak. Perhaps some good wine would be of service to him--not to-day,
but to-morrow or the day after. Only come to me if you need it; we have
some old Falerman in the loft, and white Mareotis wine, which is
particularly good and wholesome."

Hermas thanked her, and as she still urged him to apply to her in all
confidence, he took courage and succeeded in stammering rather than
saying,--"You are as good as you are beautiful."

The words were hardly spoken when the topmost stone of an elaborately
constructed pile near the slaves' house fell down with a loud clatter.
Sirona started and drew back from the window, the grey-hound set up a
loud barking, and Hermas struck his forehead with his hand as if he were
roused from a dream.

In a few instants he had knocked at the senator's door; hardly had he
entered the house when Miriam's slight form passed across behind the pile
of stones, and vanished swiftly and silently into the slaves' quarters.
These were by this time deserted by their inhabitants, who were busy in
the field, the house, or the quarries; they consisted of a few
ill-lighted rooms with bare, unfinished walls.

The shepherdess went into the smallest, where, on a bed of palm-sticks,
lay the slave that she had wounded, and who turned over as with a hasty
hand she promptly laid a fresh, but ill-folded bandage, all askew on the
deep wound in his bend. As soon as this task was fulfilled she left the
room again, placed herself behind the half open door which led into the
court-yard, and, pressing, her brow against the stone door-post, looked
first at the senator's house, and then at Sirona's window, while her
breath came faster and faster.

A new and violent emotion was stirring her young soul; not many minutes
since she had squatted peacefully on the ground by the side of the
wounded man, with her head resting on her hand, and thinking of her goats
on the mountain. Then she had heard a slight sound in the court, whi