XIX. LEO AND ATTILA—THE RESCUE OF ROME 213 XX. AMONG THE HUNS—LEO AND ATTILA 220 XXI. ON THE SABINE HILLS 228 XXII. A MEETING OF THE WATERS 236 XXIII. FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS ON THE SABINE HILLS 240 XXIV. THE LAND OF THE MORNING 251 XXV. CHAOS AND CREATION IN CHRISTENDOM 260 XXVI. “THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT,” “I SIT A QUEEN” 268 XXVII. LEO AND THE VANDALS 277 XXVIII. A TREASURE LOST AND A SOUL FOUND 286 XXIX. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS 294 [Illustration] ATTILA AND HIS CONQUERORS. CHAPTER I. IN THE WHITE ROBES OF BAPTISM. They sat together on a crag close to their home, the young brother and sister, Baithene and Ethne, only son and daughter of a chieftain of the great clan O’Neill. Prince and princess they might have been called in legendary story, and their father and mother king and queen. For there were many kings in Ireland in those early centuries, as afterwards many saints. And yet neither of these great titles, though counted by the score, were unmeaning. The saints were men and women vowed and consecrated to a holy life of devotion and service:—a true aristocracy in the Church. Homage was rendered them because nobleness was expected of them. And the kings were distinguished as really, in the minds of their people and clan, from all beneath them, as men of another stamp and metal from the rest, with a royal superscription. To serve them was honour; to obey them was imperative necessity and sacred duty; to live for them was life worth living; to die for them was death worth dying. Conan, king or chief of one branch of the O’Neills, father of Baithene and Ethne, and his wife, however poor their palace and small their kingdom, were served and honoured with a free, unquestioning loyalty altogether unknown in the servile, mercenary courts of their contemporary sovereigns in the palaces of Constantinople or Ravenna.