Once Miriam took the girl into one of the catacombs of her own people; and there also she saw in the square, strange characters the word which Miriam told her meant “Peace” in the Hebrew; also the dove with the olive branch as in the Christian tombs, and the rocky couch or ledge like that on which the angels called the Magdalene to look and see where they had laid the Lord. “No more a tomb, but only a night’s resting-place for us since He laid there,” Ethne said. And Miriam answered with mournful hesitation— “They said the disciples stole Him away.” “They did not steal Him away,” Ethne replied; “nor did He steal away from death! He met death and conquered it for us, for all, for ever.” For Ethne, nothing was in the realm of death; there was no dead past for her; back through all the ages lived that immortal life of the living Word. There was no world of shades for her; the world of the dead had become “the land of the living.” [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. ROME AND HER SAINT. While Ethne was thus becoming at home in the Aventine palace, a true daughter of the heart to Damaris, Baithene had become a stay and companion to Fabricius, such as he had scarcely known before. Baithene came to them from a simpler world than theirs, which seemed to bring back to the old Roman the nobleness and simplicity of old Rome. These children came to them both unperplexed by the confused voices of the later civilization, so feeble and so corrupt; and, moreover, without weighing on them with the responsibility which they felt anxiously with regard to their own children. And therefore they could fill up gaps and voids in their own life and thought as none brought up under the same influences could have done. The simpler world of the Sabine farm was also home-like to Baithene.