n, to awaken the reckless
populace to a feeling of contrition for their sins, and of devout
gratitude for their approaching deliverance from the horrors of the
siege.

But now, when Numerian confronted them, neither by word nor look did he
express the slightest recognition of any who surrounded him. To all
the questions addressed to him, he replied by hurried gestures that
none could comprehend. To all the promises of help and protection
heaped upon him in the first outbreak of the grief and pity of his
adherents of other days, he answered but by the same dull, vacant
glance. It was only when they relieved him of his burden, and gently
prepared to carry the senseless girl among them back to her father's
house, that he spoke; and then, in faint entreating tones, he besought
them to let him hold her hand as they went, so that he might be the
first to feel her pulse beat--if it yet moved.

They turned back by the way they had come--a sorrowful and slow-moving
procession! As they passed on, the reader again opened the Sacred
Book; and then these words rose through the soothing and heavenly
tranquillity of the first hours of night:--

'Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not
thou the chastening of the Almighty:

'For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make
whole.'

CHAPTER 26.

RETRIBUTION.

As, in the progress of Life, each man pursues his course with the
passions, good and evil, set, as it were, on either side of him; and
viewing their results in the actions of his fellow-men, finds his
attention, while still attracted by the spectacle of what is noble and
virtuous, suddenly challenged by the opposite display of what is mean
and criminal--so, in the progress of this narrative, which aims to be
the reflection of Life, the reader who has journeyed with us thus far,
and who may now be inclined to follow the little procession of
Christian devotees, to walk by the side of the afflicted father, and to
hold with him the hand of his ill-fated child, is yet, in obedience to
the conditions of the story, required to turn back for awhile to the
contemplation of its darker passages of guilt and terror--he must enter
the temple again; but he will enter it for the last time.

The scene before the altar of idols was fast proceeding to its fatal
climax.

The Pagan's frenzy had exhausted itself in its own fury--his insanity
was assuming a quieter and a more dangero