steps. The Pagan's foot was still on Goisvintha's
breast as the father passed him; his gaze was still fixed on her; but
his cries of triumph were calmed; he laughed and muttered incoherently
to himself.

The moon was rising, soft, faint, and tranquil, over the quiet street
as Numerian descended the temple steps with his daughter in his arms,
and, after an instant's pause of bewilderment and doubt, instinctively
pursued his slow, funereal course along the deserted roadway in the
direction of home. Soon, as he advanced, he beheld in the moonlight,
down the long vista of the street at its termination, a little
assemblage of people walking towards him with calm and regular
progress. As they came nearer, he saw that one of them held an open
book, that another carried a crucifix, and that others followed these
two with clasped hands and drooping heads. And then, after an
interval, the fresh breezes that blew towards him bore onward these
words, slowly and reverently pronounced:--

'Know, therefore, that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity
deserveth.

'Canst thou, by searching, find out God? Canst thou find out the
Almighty to perfection?'

Then the breeze fell, the words grew indistinct, but the procession
still moved forward. As it came nearer and nearer, the voice of the
reader was again plainly heard:--

'If iniquity be in thy hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness
dwell in thy tabernacles.

'For then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot; yea, thou shalt be
steadfast, and shalt not fear;

'Because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that
pass away:

And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine
forth, thou shalt be as the morning.'

The reader stopped and closed the book; for now Numerian had met the
members of the little procession, and they looked on him standing
voiceless before them in the clear moonlight, with his daughter's head
drooping over his shoulder as he carried her in his arms.

There were some among those who gathered round him whose features he
would have recognised at another time as the features of the surviving
adherents of his former congregation. The assembly he had met was
composed of the few sincere Christians in Rome, who had collected, on
the promulgation of the news that Alaric had ratified terms of peace,
to make a pilgrimage through the city, in the hopeless endeavour, by
reading from the Bible and passing exhortatio