to his own people.' [Footnote: A fact.] And so he
died unbaptized, and went to his own place.

Victoria was still alive and busy: but Augustine's warning had come
true-she had found trouble in the flesh. The day of the Lord had come,
and Vandal tyrants were now the masters of the fair corn-lands of
Africa. Her father and brother were lying by the side of Raphael
Aben-Ezra, beneath the ruined walls of Hippo, slain, long years before,
in the vain attempt to deliver their country from the invading swarms.
But they had died the death of heroes: and Victoria was content. And it
was whispered, among the down-trodden Catholics, who clung to her as an
angel of mercy, that she, too, had endured strange misery and disgrace;
that her delicate limbs bore the scars of fearful tortures; that a room
in her house, into which none ever entered but herself, contained a
young boy's grave; and that she passed long nights of prayer upon
the spot, where lay her only child, martyred by the hands of Arian
persecutors. Nay, some of the few who, having dared to face that fearful
storm, had survived its fury, asserted that she herself, amid her own
shame and agony, had cheered the shrinking boy on to his glorious death.
But though she had found trouble in the flesh, her spirit knew none.
Clear-eyed and joyful as when she walked by her father's side on the
field of Ostia, she went to and fro among the victims of Vandal rapine
and persecution, spending upon the maimed, the sick, the ruined, the
small remnants of her former wealth, and winning, by her purity and her
piety, the reverence and favour even of the barbarian conquerors. She
had her work to do, and she did it, and was content; and, in good time,
she also went to her own place.

Abbot Pambo, as well as Arsenius, had been dead several years; the
abbot's place was filled, by his own dying command, by a hermit from the
neighbouring deserts, who had made himself famous for many miles round,
by his extraordinary austerities, his ceaseless prayers, his loving
wisdom, and, it was rumoured, by various cures which could only be
attributed to miraculous powers. While still in the prime of his
manhood, he was dragged, against his own entreaties, from a lofty cranny
of the cliffs to reside over the Laura of Scetis, and ordained a deacon
at the advice of Pambo, by the bishop of the diocese, who, three years
afterwards, took on himself to command him to enter the priesthood. The
elder monks considered