ced that the "heavens were telling the glory of God," a God
greater than the idols she had been taught to worship. Her desire to
know that God was in itself a prayer which He answered in His own wise
way.

The fame of Origen, that famous Christian teacher in Alexandria, reached
even the remote tower, and Barbara sent a trusty servant with the
request that he would make known to her the truth. Origen sent her one
of his disciples, disguised as a physician, who instructed and baptized
her. She practised her new religion discreetly while waiting for a
favorable opportunity of acquainting her father with her conversion.

This opportunity came in a short time. Some workmen were sent by
Dioscurus to make another room in the tower, and when they had made two
windows she directed them to make a third. When her father saw this
additional window, he asked the reason for it. She replied, "Know, my
father, that the soul receives light through three windows, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the three are one." The father became
so angry at this discovery of her having become a Christian, that he
would have killed his daughter with his sword, had she not fled to the
top of the tower. He followed her, and finally had her in his power.
First he wreaked his vengeance on her in blows, then clutching her by
the hair he dragged her away and thrust her into a hut to prevent her
escape. Next he tried every means to induce her to renounce her faith;
threats, severe punishments, and starvation had no effect on the
constancy of the Christian maiden.

Finding himself powerless to shake his daughter's constancy, Dioscurus
delivered her to the proconsul Marcian, who had her scourged and
tortured, but without causing her to deny the Faith. During her
sufferings, her father stood by, exulting in the torments of his child.
Next night, after she had been taken back to prison, Our Lord appeared
to her and healed her wounds. When Barbara appeared again before him,
Marcian was greatly astonished to find no trace of the cruelties that
had been perpetrated on her body. Again she resisted his importunities
to deny the Faith, and when he saw that all his efforts were in vain, he
pronounced the sentence of death. Barbara was to be beheaded. Her
unnatural father claimed the privilege to execute it with his own hands,
and with one blow severed his daughter's head from her body, on December
4, 237.

At the moment of the saint's death a great temp