hose prisons in
which under Maximin so many Christians were destined to be turned from
the true faith.

"But she did not belong to us. Her eye met mine, and I signed my
forehead with the cross, but she did not respond to the sacred sign. The
guards led away the old woman, and she drew back into a dark corner, sat
down, and covered her face with her hands. A wondrous sympathy for the
hapless woman had taken possession of my soul; I felt as if she belonged
to me, and I to her, and I believed in her, even when the turnkey had
told me in coarse language that she had lived with a Roman at the old
woman's, and had defrauded her of a large sum of money. The next day
I went again to the prison, for her sake and my own; there I found her
again in the same corner that she had shrunk into the day before; by her
stood her prison fare untouched, a jar of water and a piece of bread.

"As I went up to her, I saw how she broke a small bit off the thin cake
for herself, and then called a little Christian boy who had come into
the prison with his mother, and gave him the remainder. The child
thanked her prettily, and she drew him to her, and kissed him with
passionate tenderness, though he was sickly and ugly.

"'No one who can love children so well is wholly lost,' said I to
myself, and I offered to help her as far as lay in my power.

"She looked at me not without distrust, and said that nothing had
happened to her, but what she deserved, and she would bear it. Before I
could enquire of her any further, we were interrupted by the Christian
prisoners, who crowded around the worthy Ammonius, who was exhorting and
comforting them with edifying discourse. She listened attentively to the
old man, and on the following day I found her in conversation with the
mother of the boy to whom she had given her bread.

"One morning, I had gone there with some fruit to offer as a treat to
the prisoners, and particularly to her. She took an apple, and said,
rising as she spoke, 'I would now ask another favor of you. You are
a Christian, send me a priest, that he may baptize me, if he does not
think me unworthy, for I am burdened with sins so heavily as no other
woman can be.' Her large, sweet, childlike eyes filled again with big
silent tears, and I spoke to her from my heart, and showed her as well
as I could the grace of the Redeemer. Shortly after, Ammonius secretly
baptized her, and she begged to be given the name of Magdalen, and so it
was, an