“There is vile work afoot to-night, Onesimus. We must call the Roman guard and hasten up to protect her caves till they come. Do you instruct our tent men, while I see the Roman captain.” * * * * * Up and up over circling trail they rode the rough mountain pass that led between the sea and Antioch. Larch, oak, fir and pine forest closed behind them darkening as they pushed their panting horses up the steep ascent. Mountain torrents rushed down to right and left in the sibilant hush of night slacking the thaw of upper snows. Narrower and narrower led the pass till the riders could have tossed a biscuit from side to side of the precipices closing in cañon cleft. Above tree line, the clouds enfolded them in a silken gauze cool as wind on hot face; and above the cloud line, they rode in a world of silver moonlight, with black shadows of the rock walls etched in ink and the howl of hyena and jackal reëchoing through the caves. The stars were lanterns hung in a lucent blue that seemed but a hand reach away from the two silent riders. Once, as they passed the dark mouth of a grotto in the rock wall washed by the tumbling cascade of waters over the precipice, they heard the roar of a lion that set all the mountains in echo. The precipices on either side of the pass now came together in overhanging arch not a lance length apart and, as they passed under the shadow, a mountain cataract leaped down—rainbow colored in the mist of moonlight, but the path seemed to be ending in a blind wall. “She chose her hiding place well,” said Apollos. “She would need to,” answered Onesimus. “Where is her religious house?” asked the aged man, as they breathed their horses. Onesimus was no longer presbyter and prospective bishop. He was mountain boy again as he had been twenty years ago before the bandits had captured him, and his eyes were searching the face of the rock cleft where only a silver bar showed open space, as an eagle might scout for its hidden nest. An eagle did at that very moment utter shrill warning of human intrusion. “That,” answered Onesimus, “must be her sentry of danger; for she was mountain born as I am; and we always chose camp near an eagle’s nest for warning.”