They had not long to wait. The very next evening Damaris and Lucia were in their lectica, with its purple curtains and golden lattices, on the great road leading northward, when they met a little company of four, walking beside two strong, heavily-laden mules. The old man who led the way, walking alone, had the dark, Oriental colouring and aquiline features which they recognized as Hebrew. Behind him walked two women, with veils drawn around the head and shoulders, one dark and stooping slightly with age, the other tall and young and fair, with a sweet light in the grey eyes which met those of Damaris. Behind them came a fair, athletic young man, holding a powerful deer-hound in leash. Damaris and Lucia looked significantly at each other. They would have followed the strangers, but their horses had suddenly changed their pace, and were galloping towards the hills, rocking the heavy carriage (or highly-decorated wagon) from side to side. The mother and daughter had not a doubt that, as in a momentary flash of lightning, they had seen the group described in Marius’ letter. As they drove on they met a troop of the slaves of the Imperial household. Meantime in the opposite direction the little company they had met entered the gate of the city, and were passed by the same troop of the Imperial household. The officer who was at the head of the band of slaves seemed struck by the four travellers, so contrasted in types of face and figure, and yet so evidently belonging to each other. Especially he fixed his eyes on the fair face of Ethne, the athletic form of Baithene, and the dog of the much-prized Irish breed. After he had passed them he turned back, and asked Eleazar where he lived, and if the dog was to be purchased, and said he might look in some day and inquire about it. Something in the officer’s look and bearing made Ethne look down and draw closer to Miriam, and Baithene look up defiantly and throw his arm around the dog, whilst the dog pricked up his ears, and gave a suspicious low growl. When they reached Eleazar’s lodging at the top of a tall house on the further side of the Tiber, where many of his countrymen congregated, and had separated into their different rooms for the night, Ethne said to her brother— “Have you the tablet the Roman soldier at Troyes gave us for his mother and father, who live in a palace on one of these hills?” “Surely,” he said; “why do you ask?” “I can scarcely say why,” she answered, with a shiver. “But this great Rome seems to me lonelier than the sea, and stranger than our first step into a strange land, and more like a den of lions than besieged Orleans or the camp of the Huns. The people look at us so strangely, as if we were foreign animals, or pieces of merchandise for sale.” “And _we are_!” moaned Baithene. “Let us say the paternoster and Patrick’s hymn,” she rejoined, “and try and go to sleep.” But they slept little. Nor did Miriam and Eleazar sleep much better.