eir appearance about two hours
before sunset, and demand admittance to Callista. The jailor asks if they
are not the two Greeks, her brother and the rhetorician, who had visited
her before. The junior of the strangers drops a purse heavy with coin into
his lap, and passes on with his companion. When the mind is intent on
great subjects or aims, heat and cold, hunger and thirst, lose their power
of enfeebling it; thus perhaps we must account for the energy now
displayed both by the two ecclesiastics and by Callista herself.

She too thought it was the unwelcome philosopher come again; she gave a
start and a cry of delight when she saw it was Caecilius. "My father," she
said, "I want to be a Christian, if I may; He came to save the lost sheep.
I have learnt such things from this book--let me give it you while I can. I
am not long for this world. Give me Him who spoke so kindly to that woman.
Take from me my load of sin, and then I will gladly go." She knelt at his
feet, and gave the roll of parchment into his hand.

"Rise and sit," he answered. "Let us think calmly over the matter."

"I am ready," she insisted. "Deny me not my wish, when time is so
urgent--if I may have it."

"Sit down calmly," he said again; "I am not refusing you, but I wish to
know about you." He could hardly keep from tears, of pain, or of joy, or
of both, when he saw the great change which trial had wrought in her. What
touched him most was the utter disappearance of that majesty of mien,
which once was hers, a gift, so beautiful, so unsuitable to fallen man.
There was instead of it a frank humility, a simplicity without
concealment, an unresisting meekness, which seemed as if it would enable
her, if trampled on, to smile and to kiss the feet that insulted her. She
had lost every vestige of what the world worships under the titles of
proper pride and self-respect. Callista was now living, not in the thought
of herself, but of Another.

"God has been very good to you," he continued; "but in the volume you have
returned to me He bids us 'reckon the charges.' Can you drink of His
chalice? Recollect what is before you."

She still continued kneeling, with a touching earnestness of face and
demeanour, and with her hands crossed upon her breast.

"I _have_ reckoned," she replied; "heaven and hell: I prefer heaven."

"You are on earth," said Caecilius; "not in heaven or hell. You must bear
the pangs of earth before you drink the blessedness of heaven