e in the world."

"Not so," replied Petrus. "You will find shelter and love under our roof
as if it were your father's, so long as it suits you to stay with us. You
need not thank us--we are deeply in your debt. Farewell till we meet
again wife. I would Polykarp were safe here, and that you had seen his
wound. Come, Marthana, the minutes are precious."

When Dorothea and Sirona were alone, the deaconess said, "Now I will go
and make up a bed for you, for you must be very tired."

"No, no!" begged Sirona. "I will wait and watch with you, for I certainly
could not sleep till I know how it is with him." She spoke so warmly and
eagerly that the deaconess gratefully offered her hand to her young
friend. Then she said, "I will leave you alone for a few minutes, for my
heart is so full of anxiety that I must needs go and pray for help for
him, and for courage and strength for myself."

"Take me with you," entreated Sirona in a low tone. "In my need I opened
my heart to your good and loving God, and I will never more pray to any
other. The mere thought of Him strengthened and comforted me, and now, if
ever, in this hour I need His merciful support."

"My child, my daughter!" cried the deaconess, deeply moved; she bent over
Sirona, kissed her forehead and her lips, and led her by the hand into
her quiet sleeping-room.

"This is the place where I most love to pray," she said, "although there
is here no image and no altar. My God is everywhere present and in every
place I can find Him."

The two women knelt down side by side, and both besought the same God for
the same mercies--not for themselves, but for another; and both in their
sorrow could give thanks--Sirona, because in Dorothea she had found a
mother, and Dorothea, because in Sirona she had found a dear and loving
daughter.

CHAPTER XXII.

Paulus was sitting in front of the cave that had sheltered Polykarp and
Sirona, and he watched the torches whose light lessened as the bearers
went farther and farther towards the valley. They lighted the way for the
wounded sculptor, who was being borne home to the oasis, lying in his
mother's easy litter, and accompanied by his father and his sister.

"Yet an hour," thought the anchorite, "and the mother will have her son
again, yet a week and Polykarp will rise from his bed, yet a year and he
will remember nothing of yesterday but a scar--and perhaps a kiss that he
pressed on the Gaulish woman's rosy lips. I shall find