The old man saw that he had to deal with a daughter of simplicity that was yet no simpleton. So he addressed her with all gentleness, as a father to a child. "Yours must have been a strange life," he said, "if the story of our Lord be strange to you. Tell me first your tale, my daughter." Then Argathona told him her story, even as she had told it to Simon of Rouen in the woodlands such a little while ago. Then she told of all that had happened since, of her encounter with the wounded knight that proved to be the young Prince of Athens, and of their plighted loves, and of the treachery of Esclaramonde, and of her visit to Athens and what came of it, and of her resolve to wait in the greenwood till her true-love came to find her. While she spoke the old man listened in silence, and though there was much in her story to marvel at, yet in his eyes there was no signal of disbelief, and the hope burned hotly in his heart that it might be vouchsafed to him to save this spirit. When Argathona had told her story he turned to her, and his eyes were vessels of pity and his voice was the promise of charity. Gently he bade her sit by him on the grass beneath the image of silver, and tenderly he bade her hearken to the words he had to say. And Argathona obeyed him and sat by him, watching his face and feeding on his words in silence. Then the old man told her the story of the Redeemer. He told of the prophecy and the fulfilment, the angel and the birth, of the cruelty of Herod the king, and the flight, and the shining of the star, and the coming of the wise, and the worship of the babe in the manger. He told of the going to Jerusalem, and of the child amid the doctors, and the growth in glory; of the meeting with John the Baptist, and the temptation through Satan, and the many miracles, the changing of water into wine, the walking on the water, the feeding of the multitude, the raising of Lazarus from the dead. He told of the danger of the Master, and the treason of Judas, and the last supper, and the passion in Gethsemane, and the trial before Pilatus. He told of the crucifixion. He told of the resurrection. Argathona sat by the side of the old man in the quiet of the hill-side and hearkened and wondered, and ever as he spoke she seemed to hear far off in the woodlands the voices of the old gods complaining. And the hours waned, and the sacred tale went on, in the solitude of the forest. Far away to the east a great massacre had taken place in the Theban plain, and the levies of Baldwin were flying like sheep on the road to Athens. But no noise of the killing, no echo of the flight came to trouble the ancient and the maid in their business of telling and hearing the mystery of the redemption.