d, it comes forward and decides the
battle. First let me speak to the lad. It may be that he threw the rose
into Sirona's window only in sport, for she plays with his brothers and
sisters as if she herself were one of them. I will question him; for if
it is so, it would be neither just nor prudent to blame him. Some caution
is needed even in giving a warning; for many a one, who would never have
thought of stealing, has become a thief through false suspicion. A young
heart that is beginning to love, is like a wild boy who always would
rather take the road he is warned to avoid, and when I was a girl, I
myself first discovered how much I liked you, when the Senator Aman's
wife--who wanted you for her own daughter--advised me to be on my guard
with you. A man who has made such good use of his time, among all the
temptations of the Greek Sodom, as Polykarp, and who has won such high
praise from all his teachers and masters, cannot have been much injured
by the light manners of the Alexandrians. It is in a man's early years
that he takes the bent which he follows throughout his later life, and
that he had done before he left our house. Nay--even if I did not know
what a good fellow Polykarp is--I need only look at you to say, 'A child
that was brought up by this father, could never turn out a bad man.'"

Petrus sadly shrugged his shoulders, as though he regarded his wife's
flattering words as mere idle folly, and yet he smiled, as he asked,
"Whose school of rhetoric did you go to? So be it then; speak to the lad
when he returns from Raithu. How high the moon is already; come to
rest--Antonius is to place the altar in the early dawn, and I wish to be
present."

CHAPTER IX.

Miriam's ears had not betrayed her. While she was detained at supper,
Hermas had opened the courtyard-gate; he came to bring the senator a
noble young buck, that he had killed a few hours before, as a
thank-offering for the medicine to which his father owed his recovery. It
would no doubt have been soon enough the next morning, but he could find
no rest up on the mountain, and did not--and indeed did not care
to--conceal from himself the fact, that the wish to give expression to
his gratitude attracted him down into the oasis far less than the hope of
seeing Sirona, and of hearing a word from her lips.

Since their first meeting he had seen her several times, and had even
been into her house, when she had given him the wine for his father, and
w