But he, with his child’s blood smoking on his hand, shook his sword aloft fiercely against the legionaries, and leaping on his black horse which had arisen from the ground unhurt by its fall, gallopped across the bridge; and plunging through the underwood into the deep chesnut forest was lost to the view of the soldiers, who had spurred up in pursuit of him, that they abandoned it ere long as hopeless. It was not long that Lucia lay oblivious of her sufferings. A sense of fresh coolness on her brow, and the checked flow of the blood, which gushed from those cruel wounds, were the first sensations of which she became aware. But, as she opened her eyes, they met well known and loving faces; and soft hands were busy about her bleeding gashes; and hot tears were falling on her poor pallid face from eyes that seldom wept. Julia was kneeling at her side, Paullus Arvina was bending over her in speechless gratitude, and sorrow; and the stern cavaliers of the legion, unused to any soft emotions, stood round holding their chargers’ bridles with frowning brows, and lips quivering with sentiments, which few of them had experienced since the far days of their gentler boyhood. "Oh! happy," she exclaimed, in a soft low tone, "how happy it is so to die! and in dying to see thee, Paullus." "Oh! no! no! no!" cried Julia, "you must not, shall not die! my friend, my sister! O, tell her, Paullus, that she will not die, that she will yet be spared to our prayers, our love, our gratitude, our veneration." But Paullus spoke not; a soldier, and a man used to see death in all shapes in the arena, he knew that there was no hope, and, had his life depended on it, he could not, at that moment have deceived her. Little, however, cared the dying girl for that; even if she had heard or comprehended the appeal. Her ears, her mind, were full of other thoughts, and a bright beautiful irradiation played over her wan lips and ashy features, as she cried joyously, although her voice was very tremulous and weak. "Paullus, do you hear that? her friend! her sister! Paullus, Paullus, do you hear that? Julia calls me her friend—me, me her sister! me the disgraced—" "Peace! peace! Dear Lucia! you must not speak such words!" said Paullus. "Be your past errors what they may—and who am I, that I should talk of errors?—this pure high love—this delicate devotion—this death most heroical and glorious no! no! I cannot—" and the strong man bowed his head upon his hands, and burst into an agony of tears and passion. No revelation from on high had taught those poor Romans, that ’joy shall be in heaven, over the sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance.’