“Certainly this poor, mad Eleazar does not,” Baithene replied, with a kind of grim pity, “and you need not fear that I shall try to open his eyes, or to open any one’s eyes to his possessing the treasure.” “It is hidden away very safely, Miriam says; not even she knows where. Most of it probably in Rome, or some safe place, away from the Huns, where we are going.” “_Is_ Rome safe from the Huns?” he said doubtfully. “I do not know about the Huns,” she replied, “that is all so new. The Goths and the Celts seem to be leaving Rome alone just now.” There was a pause. They were becoming sleepy. But before they settled to slumber Baithene said— “Do they know anything of the other Testament of God? Do they believe in Christ our Lord?” “I am afraid not,” she replied sorrowfully, “at all events not Eleazar. You see, it was the Christians who robbed him of his child.” “But Miriam?” he asked. “When I spoke to her of Him,” Ethne replied, “she said He seemed to have been very good, not like most Christians. She did even say hesitatingly and timidly, looking round as if she were afraid her husband might hear, that she sometimes wished their people could have understood how good He was, and what He was, in time; it might, she thought, have made everything different; but now it seemed too late for them.” “It is never too late, in this life, at least. You remember Patrick says so in that letter we heard in the cave; not even for apostate Christians, he said; not even for Coroticus and those wicked pirates, who slew or kidnapped Patrick’s newly-baptized sons and daughters, and us among them.” “Let us say the Lord’s Prayer together,” said Ethne, “and try to put Coroticus and Eleazar and their trespasses into it, with all the rest.” They rose and knelt hand in hand, and prayed, and then lay down again and fell asleep. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. TOURS AND HER SAINT. In a few days, at early dawn, the journeys of Baithene and Ethne began again. Eleazar hired a boat, and they went up the Loire to the city of Tours, where they landed. This was the first city the captives had ever seen, and it impressed them greatly; the high walls, the tall houses, the villas of the Roman officials and rich citizens, in which it was set as if in a cluster of gems. They wondered how much more magnificent the great Rome itself could be. They were still among people of their own race, and language not quite unfamiliar was around them; but being on the south side of the river, in the kingdom of Theodoric, the Visigoth, the town had escaped the ravages of the other Gothic tribes, and also, now, of the Huns in northern and eastern Gaul. There, also for the first time, they saw a cathedral, the only sacred building they had yet beheld having been the round cell of hewn stones in Ireland, and the little chapel with the bell-tower on the sandy shore in Cornwall.