vish, burn, and
slay,' answered Synesius. 'Nevertheless, I am not going to argue with
Augustine.'

Augustine! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, delicate-featured
personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like his cheeks
with the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve, gentle but
unbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and his clear quiet
eye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-out
volcano, over which centuries must pass before the earthquake-rents be
filled with kindly soil, and the cinder-slopes grow gay with grass and
flowers. The Jew's thoughts, however, were soon turned into another
channel by the hearty embraces of Majoricus and his son.

'We have caught you again, you truant!' said the young Tribune; 'you
could not escape us, you see, after all.'

'Rather,' said the father, 'we owe him a second debt of gratitude for a
second deliverance. We were right hard bested when you rode up.'

'Oh, he brings nothing but good with him whenever he appears; and then
he pretends to be a bird of ill-omen,' said the light-hearted Tribune,
putting his armour to rights.

Raphael was in his secret heart not sorry to find that his old friends
bore him no grudge for his caprice; but all he answered was-- 'Pray
thank any one but me; I have, as usual, proved myself a fool. But
what brings you here, like Gods e Machina? It is contrary to all
probabilities. One would not admit so astounding an incident, even in
the modern drama.'

'Contrary to none whatsoever, my friend. We found Augustine at Berenice,
in act to set off to Synesius: we--one of us, that is--were certain that
you would be found with him; and we decided on acting as Augustine's
guard, for none of the dastard garrison dare stir out.'

'One of us,' thought Raphael,--'which one?' And, conquering his pride,
he asked, as carelessly as he could, for Victoria.

'She is there in the litter, poor child!' said her father in a serious
tone.

'Surely not ill?'

'Alas! either the overwrought excitement of months of heroism broke down
when she found us safe at last' or some stroke from God--.... Who can
tell what I may not have deserved?--But she has been utterly prostrate
in body and mind, ever since we parted from you at Berenice.'

The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own words. But
Raphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his heart, too keen for
him to discern whether it sprang from j