“Thou wilt bring thy little son to God, and God will surely make him a fountain of blessing to the world,” said Damaris, very tenderly. “But we scarcely needed a dream to promise us that!” Then very earnestly Ethne added to Marius— “This child may be called Paul, may he not? Because of Paul’s conquering Nero, and because of his letter to the master about his slave.” Which request was solemnly promised to be fulfilled, and the mother forbidden to discourse any further for the time. Lucia, meantime, having in vain sought loyally for a Celtic name which Latin lips could pronounce, and which would not seem too barbarous for her little son, finally contented herself and every one with the name of Patrick, the Apostle of the Irish. And so, when the next Baptismal Festival came, at the Epiphany, the two babes were brought to the baptistery of Constantine at the Lateran. And there, in the water from the fountains on the Sabine hills (as Ethne liked to think), the Aqua Claudia and the Fons Ceruleus, the two little sons of Rome and Ireland were baptized by the great Bishop Leo, and sent forth on their journey of life, to be known thenceforth by the dear and consecrated names of Paul and Patrick. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIV. THE LAND OF THE MORNING. Soon after the baptism the longing of Ethne’s heart was granted. She and Marius, with Baithene and Lucia and the babes, set off on their long journey to the old Irish home. They started from Ostia, the port of Rome, from the quays on the Tiber (near the house where St. Monica had died), and coasted to Marseilles, where they landed. Thence they crossed the Visigothic kingdom to the mouth of the Loire, where they chartered an armed vessel for Ireland. Britain it was not possible to cross, torn as it then was by the successive irruptions from the north, Saxon, Jute, and Angle, which for the time made it heathen, but in the end, as we know, made it England. They touched at the cove (Perran Porth) on the western coast, still in the hands of the Britons, where Ethne and Baithene had listened to the epistle of Patrick and to the bell in the little church. To all of them that little bay was a shrine of sacred memories and a spring of inexhaustible hope. They brought the babes across the sandy cove into the little church, with offerings of gold and silver, and laid them in the arms of the priest for benediction. And then they set sail again across the Irish Channel.