“The end!” said Lucia. “Where?” wondering if Ethne had discovered a new book of the Holy Scriptures in her far country. “In the Four Gospels,” said Ethne, “in the Cross. _We_ do not need, of course, that God should explain Himself. He has sent His Son.” * * * * * The winter passed rapidly away. At first they did not venture to take Ethne amongst the great congregations in the basilicas; but occasionally, as time went on, and also her Latin grew stronger, learned naturally in the every-day speech of the home, they took her to some quiet corner of the great churches, to hear one of the great sermons of Leo; and so, gradually, the conviction dawned on her as she stood among the hushed multitudes, and listened to the strong, plain words of the great Bishop, that Rome, like Troyes, had also her great living saint. The heresies he refuted were indeed unknown to her; to her his eloquent, clear exposition of the Faith in the Incarnate Lord was but an unfolding of what she had been taught in the simple creed and hymn of Patrick, guarded, as she felt, against foes she knew not; but guarded by simply strengthening wall and buttress of the great fortress of truth, within which she had already found rest. The Christian catacombs also had the deepest interest for Ethne; they never seemed to have any gloom for the young girl. The radiance of the presence of the Good Shepherd, painted on the walls, seemed to make them warm and bright for her. The Shepherd with the sheep and lambs gathered around his feet, and in one place with the lost kid of the goats on His shoulder; the music of the young Orpheus (also on those frescoed walls), in his immortal youth, filled all the silent chambers. “Christ, our Orpheus, is for ever gathering the living stones into the Holy City by His music,” Damaris said; “from the wildernesses of the far West, from the ruins of Rome, from the Egyptian deserts of Telemachus.” “And for ever making the world young again,” said Lucia; “as He has now sent you into our old world to make it new again for us.” “It does not seem old to me,” said Ethne. “How should it?” said Lucia. “Does the spring-tide ever leave the world old? Do the fountains of living water ever know what drought means?” They read to her from the rough old Greek letters the inscriptions, “_In peace_,” “_Thou livest_,” “Mayest thou live _in God_.” “It is the story of the princesses of our race, the story of our Ethne the Fair and Fedelma the Ruddy. They said to Patrick, ‘Give us to see the Son, our Spouse,’ and they received the Eucharist of God, and they saw the Son, their Spouse, and they slept in peace.”