At that time there were bandits and robbers and troops of marauding soldiers all through the hills and valleys of Italy, and people rarely ventured beyond the city walls. Catherine, however, held to the road, passing an occasional solitary house where some goat-herd or farmer lived. At last a brook tempted her to leave the highway and follow along its course, and in time it brought her to a cave made by a shelving rock that came close down to the bank of the stream. This seemed just the place for a hermit's home, and she went into the cave and fell upon her knees to give thanks that she had been brought safely to this refuge. Again she fell into a trance, as she had done on the day when she saw the vision. She thought she heard voices which told her that though she was to lead a different life from her friends she must do her work among people and not alone in the wilderness, and bade her go home before her father and mother should think she was lost. When she had heard this counsel Catherine rose and went out of the cave. She looked back along the path by which she had come; it seemed a long way home to Siena and she felt tired and warm. She sat down on the bank of the brook and ate some of the bread she had brought with her and then fell asleep. When she woke she was rested, and jumping up hurried back to the road so that she might reach the gate by sunset. She came to the city walls in time to pass through the gate just before the guard closed it for the night, and went straight on to her father's house. Fortunately her parents had not been worried by her absence, supposing she had been spending the day at her sister's.