o assist those friends, of all
others; and Nilus, who was respectfully devoted to her, had greeted her
from Orion with peculiar warmth. He would come to-morrow, no doubt; and
the oftener she repeated to herself his assertion that he had never
betrayed affectionate trust, the more earnestly she felt prompted, in
spite of the abbess' counsel, to abandon all hesitancy, to follow the
impulse of her heart, and to be his at once in full and happy confidence.

The waning moon had not yet risen, and the night was very dark when the
nuns set forth. The boat was too large to come close to the shore in the
present low state of the river, and the sisters, disguised as
peasant-women, had to be carried on board one by one from the convent
garden. Last of all the abbess was to be lifted over the shallow water,
and the old ship-builder held himself in readiness to perform this
service. Joanna, Pulcheria, Perpetua, and Eudoxia, who was also zealously
orthodox, were standing round as she gave Paula a parting kiss and
whispered: "God bless thee, child!--All now depends on you, and you must
be doubly careful to abide by your promise."

"I owe him, in the first place, friendly trust," was Paula's whispered
reply, and the abbess answered: "But you owe yourself firmness and
caution." Rufinus was the last; his wife and daughter clung around him
still.

"Take example from that poor girl," cried the old man, clasping his wife
in his arms. "As sure as man is the standard of all things, all must go
well with me this time if everlasting Love is not napping. Till we meet
again, best of good women!--And, if ill befalls your stupid old husband,
always remember that he brought it upon himself in trying to save a
quarter of a hundred innocent women from the worst misfortunes. At any
rate I shall fall on the road I myself have chosen.--But why has
Philippus not come to take leave of me?"

Dame Joanna burst into tears: "That-that is so hard too! What has come
over him that he has deserted us, and just now of all times? Ah, husband!
If you love me, take Gibbus with you on the voyage."

"Yes, master, take me," the hunchbacked gardener interposed. "The Nile
will be rising again by the time we come back, and till then the flowers
can die without my help. I dreamt last night that you picked a rose from
the middle of my Bump. It stuck up there like the knob on the lid of a
pot. There is some meaning in it and, if you leave me at home, what is
the good of t