As the great Roman thoroughfare, the Via Valeria, branched off into the narrower road along the banks of the Anio, and climbed up the mountains by Sublaqueum and the Roman villa of Nero, her spirits rose at every step. As they passed picturesque village after village perched for safety on the crests of the hills, or plunged deeper and deeper into the mountains and among the luxuriant forests, her whole spirit seemed to rise and breathe the bracing air of the heights. The country house was comparatively simple; the decorations and conveniences of the villa of the Roman noble, hot and cold baths, halls and corridors with mosaic floors, and quiet inner chambers, were there; but the corridor in front was like a trellised rustic pergola, with the vines clustering around the pillars. It opened on a terrace from which there was immediate access to the free wild hills. Baithene, from his long residence there with Fabricius, was familiar with it all, at home with the place and the people; his many acts of care and kindness had won for them both an enthusiastic welcome, which almost made the brother and sister feel as if they were amongst the men and women of their own clan; they were understood, beloved, and honoured there, and free to do what they would, and go whither they would, without restraint. Baithene knew all the mountain paths, and it was their delight to climb crag after crag with feet nimble as the wild goat’s, to gaze from the heights across fold after fold of the great range of the Apennines, or over the lower hills to the far-off plains and the sea. But most of all, Ethne’s delight was in the fountains and streams, the springs bubbling up on the hill-sides, and pouring out their crystal waters from under the crags. “We have come once more from the aqueducts to the fountains,” she said; “the waters are no more imprisoned and enslaved in rigid stone channels, they are free. And we are free,” she added, “free to go forth like them, and make the world glad, and to minister freely to its humblest needs.” For they were indeed in a land of fountains and brooks, which run among valleys and hills; the Aqua Marcia, and the Aqua Claudia, and the Fons Ceruleus of heavenly blue, the crystal springs which fed the waters of the great Claudian aqueduct, kept perennially full the magnificent fountains of Rome, and sparkled in Constantine’s porphyry basins in the great baptistery of the Lateran. Many a gracious kindness they found means and opportunities of doing to the peasantry, and the dull, cowed expression on many of the faces was for them transfigured into a trusting smile of welcome. The heavy, universal shadow of slavery weighed indeed on all the toilers; yet a hope dawned on Ethne of penetrating it with the light of Christian redemption and human brotherhood. Thus for the most part those happy days were for both of them a bathing of body, soul, and spirit in the fountain of youth, in the beauty and strength and freedom of nature.