“I was in the tower in Aquileia with the Lady Digna,” he began. “The yells of the victorious Huns were all around us, closer and closer up the steps. When she sprang from the tower into the river, something like madness seized me, as doubtless it had seized her, and I sprang after her, with some wild hope of saving her. I sank and then rose, and seemed to grasp her robe, and swam, keeping desperate hold of it, and then clutched something with one hand, which may have been a post for fastening boats to on the other side of the river. Then something struck my head, whether a javelin from the Huns or the strong current dashing me against the point of rock I know not. I could only cry, ‘Christe Domine, miserere nobis!’ Then I became unconscious, and when I awoke in the night, hours afterwards, I was stretched on the opposite bank of the river, alone.” “Then thy ‘Miserere’ may have been the last sound on her dying ear?” said Damaris. “I know not,” he replied. “At all events, the mercy for which I cried, the Christ on Whom I called, was there, and not uncaring or asleep.” After a pause he went on— “I was alone. It was night, but the river and all the land around were lit up by the flames of the burning city. And the silence of night was broken by exulting yells of vengeance, by cries of agony and vain entreaty, and, worse almost than all, by the hideous laughter of bacchanalian orgies. “Something must have wounded me, for my head and hands were bleeding, and I was faint with loss of blood. But I contrived to creep under the shelter of an empty cattle-shed in the desolate fields; and there I lay, I know not how long—lay there,” he continued, turning to Ethne, “until I was saved through thee.