“There is no home,” sighed Baithene; “there are no homes in the world. It is all a desert, a ruin, a wreck.” “Patrick’s people always told us we were only on a journey here on earth,” Ethne replied. “‘Pilgrims’ they called us; but that must mean that we are travelling to a temple, that there _is_ a home somewhere.” Baithene unfolded to her all his tidings of the miseries of the world; of the exacting Roman tax-gatherers; the oppressed rebel peasants; of Attila and the Huns. “And,” he concluded, “we are to be hunted about through it all as the slaves of an old miser, who would bargain for a crust with a starving beggar in a burning city.” But Ethne had seen the world and the old man and woman from a very different point of view that day, and was full of pity and hope. She must have found her Latin vocabulary more extensive than she thought, or the hostess must have had some secret stock of Celtic,—she had lived amongst well-nigh every tribe and kindred and nation, and there were Celts, she said, in Asia,—for by some means these two had come to a marvellous amount of comprehension of each other’s histories and characters. “He is not only a miser, Baithene,” she replied, in refutation of his dark apprehensions, “he was of a princely house like our own, even more ancient it would almost seem, if that could be,” she added, with a loyal faith in her Irish pedigree; “for,” she concluded in a low voice, “I have found out who they are. You remember Patrick always called the sacred books ‘the Testaments of God.’ There are two Testaments of God. There is the Old, and there is the New, which has much better and more glorious things in it because it has the Christ. But these people belong to the Old, which is also from God, and has also certainly excellent things in it; it was this they were reading yesterday in the great roll with the black letters. I remember Patrick’s people told us that our Lord Christ Himself read wonderful things out of it, about healing the broken-hearted, and setting at liberty those that were bound. Perhaps, brother,” she exclaimed, with a sudden flash as of discovery, “it was _that_ they were reading! Certainly my heart _was_ rather broken, and she has been very healing to me. His name is Eleazar; her name is Mariam, or Miriam, like the very best name of all, the name of the Blessed Mother. Perhaps it is the very same,” and her voice lowered, “for they are indeed of a very ancient and honourable race; perhaps, if that were possible, more honourable as well as more ancient than our own. They are of the very nation and people of the Lord Christ Himself.” “The people of the Lord Christ crucified Him!” replied Baithene, not easily able to believe much good of his bargaining host, “and one of them betrayed and sold Him.” “Patrick said it was the Romans who crucified Him,” said Ethne.