stood the food he had prepared for her. She had eaten
nothing since her breakfast, and she now tried to drink the milk, but it
had curdled and was not fit to use; a small bit of bread and a few dates
quite satisfied her.

As the lightning and thunder began to follow each other more and more
quickly, and the darkness fast grew deeper, a great fear fell upon her;
she pushed the food on one side, and looked up to the mountain where
the peaks were now wholly veiled in night, now seemed afloat in a sea of
flame, and more distinctly visible than by daylight. Again and again a
forked flash like a saw-blade of fire cut through the black curtain of
cloud with terrific swiftness, again and again the thunder sounded
like a blast of trumpets through the silent wilderness, and multiplied
itself, clattering, growling, roaring, and echoing from rock to rock.
Light and sound at last seemed to be hurled from Heaven together, and
the very rock in which her cave was formed quaked.

Crushed and trembling she drew back into the inmost depth of her rocky
chamber, starting at each flash that illumined the darkness.

At length they occurred at longer intervals, the thunder lost its
appalling fury, and as the wind drove the storm farther and farther to
the southwards, at last it wholly died away.

CHAPTER XVII.

It was quite dark in Sirona's cavern, fearfully dark, and the blacker
grew the night which shrouded her, the more her terror increased. From
time to time she shut her eyes as tightly as she could, for she fancied
she could see a crimson glare, and she longed for light in that hour
as a drowning man longs for the shore. Dark forebodings of every kind
oppressed her soul.

What if Paulus had abandoned her, and had left her to her fate? Or if
Polykarp should have been searching for her on the mountain in this
storm, and in the darkness should have fallen into some abyss, or have
been struck by the lightning? Suppose the mass of rock that overhung the
entrance to the cave should have been loosened in the storm, and should
fall, and bar her exit to the open air? Then she would be buried alive,
and she must perish alone, without seeing him whom she loved once more,
or telling him that she had not been unworthy of his trust in her.

Cruelly tormented by such thoughts as these, she dragged herself up and
felt her way out into the air and wind, for she could no longer hold out
in the gloomy solitude and fearful darkness. She had har