There was also in Hyacintha’s child-heart a strange yearning for the office for which she was to be trained under her kinswoman. Years must pass, she knew, before the care of that sacred fire could really be entrusted to her, but the time would come, and then what life on earth could be found to compare to it? Had Hyacintha lived in our day, she would have had the same visions and dreams of a vocation higher than that which is pursued year by year by those who live only for the present. In the higher rank of society, which corresponds to that in which our little Hyacintha was born, there is the same imperative demand made for all that can conduce to pleasure. The London season of to-day, with its ceaseless round of gaiety, its slavish adherence to prevailing customs, the glare and false brilliancy of the life of the votaries of fashion, is found quite insufficient for many who are caught in the vortex and hurried along the stream, to be carried they have scarcely time to ask whither. The human heart, with all its joys and sorrows, is the same in the nineteenth as it was in the fourth century. The surroundings may be different, and this difference in outside things is likely to make us look upon the men and women of a remote age as apart from us, and forget that they had their cares, and joys, and hopes, and fears, as we have them now. The woman’s heart then, as now, often sent up a cry for something that could satisfy it; and half-unconsciously to herself that cry was making itself heard in Hyacintha’s young heart, like the first notes of a bird sent forth to meet the dawn. All travelling was long and dangerous in those times. The tribes of Gaul--the Burgundæ--had risen in 287, and Carausius, who had carried all before him for ten years in Britain, had once been amongst them. The troop which Burrhus commanded did not pass through the country without several fierce encounters with the Burgundæ, and the women were terror-struck with the clash of arms, and the savage cries of the wild bands which again and again attacked them. The wife of Burrhus was attended by several ladies and slaves, and Hyacintha and Casca each had their own attendant. Hyacintha’s was a girl of Roman birth, who thought it an honour to be the servant of a young aspirant to the office of a priestess in the temple of Vesta. In one of the most alarming encounters Casca was wounded in the shoulder. His father had given Burrhus instructions to lose no opportunity of hardening his son, and to do everything that might make him worthy to be a Roman soldier, so that he was placed in the front rank of this skirmish. Poor Casca suffered terribly from his wound, though in the eyes of the soldiers it was but a trifling one.