All day prayer went up ceaselessly in the churches, but mostly in silence, or following the low litanies of the choir, so heavy was the weight of suspense. A confusion of contradictory rumours reached the city: first it was reported that the Romans had won the height on which all might depend; then that Theodoric the great King of the Visigoths was slain. After that fell the darkness. And through the night people took refuge in the churches, and silent prayer went up; until at last, in the quiet dawn of the July morning, came the news that the battle was over, that Attila and his Huns had fled behind their wagons, and that the Roman army held the field. Soon came the further news that Attila and his host were retreating towards the Rhone, carrying Bishop Lupus with them. The city and the land were saved from the destroyer, but who could answer for the saintly life so freely offered up for the people? To Ethne and Baithene the city, in a sense they themselves, seemed orphaned afresh; and in their different ways and words, the little group of four, Irish and Hebrew, poured out their hearts together for the prophet still in the den of lions. There was much to be done for the crippled and wounded who were borne in from time to time from the battle. Baithene went out with the wagons to carry them in; Ethne was again among the deaconesses and consecrated virgins, succouring the wounded. Late in the evening Baithene came with a cart to the door of the house where Eleazar was sojourning; he asked to be allowed to bring in a young Roman officer who had recognized him. True to the hospitality of their race and their religion, Eleazar and Miriam would not refuse. Was not Abraham, “the father of the faithful,” also the “father of guests”? Had he not received the heathen stranger into his house? yet had not the Almighty been more merciful than Abraham, rebuking the patriarch for not tolerating the imperfect worship of his heathen guest? The Romans had indeed destroyed Jerusalem, but this wounded Roman must be welcomed as a guest from God, and the guest-chamber was made ready for him. The stranger was Marius, whose wounds were more severe than he had chosen to report in his letters to his family. For the first day he lay quite still, weak from loss of blood; but Miriam’s homely skill in nursing and preparing food for the sick proved of good service, and on the third morning he was able to creep out with Baithene and Ethne to the church. On the way they told him of the rescue of Troyes from the plunder of Attila’s host through the intercession of Lupus, and how the aged Bishop had given himself up to the Huns for his people.