"Oh, Beric," she cried, "what have you not done for us, and how much do we not owe you! Had it not been for you, I should be mourning now, not for Ennia who lies with a smile on her face in her chamber, but for Ennia torn to pieces and devoured by the lion. It seemed to me that I too should die, when suddenly you stood between her and the fierce beast, seeming to my eyes as if a god had come down to save her; and when all the people gave you up as lost, standing there unarmed and calmly waiting the lion's attack, I felt that you would conquer. Truly Ennia's God and yours must have stood beside you, though I saw them not. How else could you have been so strong and fearless? Ennia thought so too. She told me so one night when the house was asleep, and I only watching beside her. 'My God was with him,' she said. 'None other could have given him the strength to battle with the lion. He will bring him to Himself in good time, and I shall meet him again.' She said something about your knowing that she was a Christian. But, of course, you could not have known that." "I did know it, Aemilia;" and Beric then told her of his meeting with Ennia and the old slave when they were attacked by the plunderers on the way home from their place of meeting. "She promised me not to go again," he said, "without letting me know, in which case I should have escorted her and protected her from harm. But just after that there was the fire, and I had to go away with Scopus to the Alban Hills; and so, as she knew that I could not escort her, I never heard from her. I would that I had been with her that night she was arrested, then she might not have fallen into the hands of the guard. Indeed, had I been here I would have gone gladly, for it seemed to me there must be something strange in the religion that would induce a quiet gentle girl like her to go out at night unknown to her parents. Now I desire even more to learn about it. Her God must surely have given her the strength and courage that she showed when she chose death by lions rather than deny Him." "I, too, should like to know something about it," Aemilia said. "By the way Ennia spoke, when she said you knew that she was a Christian, it seemed to me that, if you did know, which I thought was impossible, she thought you were angry with her for becoming a Christian." "I was angry with her not for being a Christian, but for going out without your father's knowledge, and I told her so frankly. If it had been you I should not have been so much surprised, because you have high spirits and are fearless in disposition; but for her to do so seemed so strange and unnatural, that I deemed this religion of hers must be bad in that it taught a girl to deceive her parents." "What did she say, Beric?" "I could see that she considered it her duty beyond all other duties, and so said no more, knowing nothing of her religion beyond what your father told me."