“You are from the Britanniæ,” he said. “I have been there with the holy bishops Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes, to combat the Pelagian heresy;” and with some anxiety he asked, “You are not Pelagians?” They had never heard of the Pelagian heresy, which was at all events negatively satisfactory. But when he asked them from which of the seven provinces of Britain they came, he found they did not know anything about the seven provinces of Britain, which perplexed him not a little. “Whence then do you come?” “From the island beyond Britain,” Baithene replied; and he added with a mixture of apology and pride, “From the island the Romans never conquered.” “A heathen land!” exclaimed the monk, with some agitation. “How come you then to be Christians?” For he had seen them make the sign of the Cross, and make it in the orthodox Latin way. The sign of the Cross had significance in more than one way, then, as the sound of church bells and many other symbols. They told him about Patrick, and by degrees a light came into his face. He had heard a rumour of some new mission in that wild, far-off island, and also a rumour that the missionary bishop was in some way connected with their own sainted bishop, Martin of Tours. This he told them, and also that it was by the tomb of St. Martin they were standing. Both of their faces grew radiant at this new link with Patrick and home. Ethne knelt down again beside the tomb, and pressed her lips to the cold marble as if it had been a mother’s hand. The monk questioned them about themselves, and listened with tender interest and strong indignation to their story. “Kidnapped by Christians, and sold to a Jew!” he exclaimed, in a climax of horror. “In our Martin’s time we would have ransomed you at once at any price, if we had had to sell the vessels of the altar for it, as the blessed old man did himself when his young deacon moved too slowly to fulfil his bidding; in his impetuous eagerness taking off his own sacerdotal robe when he was about to celebrate Mass, and throwing it around a wretched, naked beggar! Just as in his eager youth, when he was a soldier, he had cut his military cloak in two to give it to a beggar at Amiens!” They listened eagerly. That was indeed a saint worth hearing about. The old monk was launched on an endless subject when he began with St. Martin.