ed not less fresh and charming than on that morning when she had
been seen and watched by Hermas. True, her heart was sore, true, she was
perplexed and miserable, but sleep and rest had long since effaced from
her healthy, youthful, and elastic frame all traces left by that fearful
day of flight; and fate, which often means best by us when it shows us a
hostile face, had sent her a minor anxiety to divert her from her graver
cares.

Her greyhound was very ill, and it seemed that in the ill-treatment
it had experienced, not only its leg had been broken, but that it had
suffered some internal injury. The brisk, lively little creature fell
down powerless when ever it tried to stand, and when she took it up to
nurse it comfortably in her lap, it whined pitifully, and looked up at
her sorrowfully, and as if complaining to her. It would take neither
food nor drink; its cool little nose was hot; and when she left the
cave, Iambe lay panting on the fine woollen coverlet which Paulus had
spread upon the bed, unable even to look after her.

Before taking the dog the water she had fetched in the graceful
jar--which was another gift from her hospitable friend--she went up to
Paulus and greeted him kindly. He looked up from his work, thanked her,
and a few minutes later, when she came out of the cave again, asked her,
"How is the poor little creature?"

Sirona shrugged her shoulders, and said sadly, "She has drunk nothing,
and does not even know me, and pants as rapidly as last evening--if I
were to lose the poor little beast!--"

She could say no more for emotion, but Paulus shook his head.

"It is sinful," he said, "to grieve so for a beast devoid of reason."

"Iambe is not devoid of reason," replied Sirona. "And even if she were,
what have I left if she dies? She grew up in my father's house, where
all loved me; I had her first when she was only a few days old, and I
brought her up on milk on a little bit of sponge. Many a time, when I
heard the little thing whining for food, have I got out of bed at night
with bare feet; and so she came to cling to me like a child, and could
not do without me. No one can know how another feels about such things.
My father used to tell us of a spider that beautified the life of a
prisoner, and what is a dirty dumb creature like that to my clever,
graceful little dog! I have lost my home, and here every one believes
the worst of me, although I have done no one any harm, and no one, no
one lo