joyous sunshine, never to behold them
again? Must he be buried in these gloomy vaults for ever? These thoughts
surged through his brain, and almost drove him wild. But what sounds are
those that steal faintly on his ear? They seem like the music of heaven
heard in the heart of hell. Stronger, sweeter, clearer, come the holy
voices. And now they shape themselves to words, "Nam et si ambulavero in
medio umbr[ae] mortis, non timebo mala--Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." Was it to taunt his
terrors those strange words were sung? Then the holy chant went on,
"Quonian tu mecum es Virga tua, et baculus tuus, ipsa me consolata
sunt--For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." What
strange secret had these Christians that sustained their souls even
surrounded by the horrors of the tomb?

[Illustration: CORRIDOR OF CATACOMB.]

Isidorus groped his way amid the gloom toward these heavenly sounds.
Soon he caught a faint glimmer of light reflected from an angle of the
corridor, and then a ray through an open doorway pierced the gloom.
Hurrying forward he found the whole company from which he had become
separated gathered in a sort of chapel hewn out of the solid rock. The
body of Lucius lay upon the bier before an open tomb, hewn out of the
wall. The venerable presbyter, by the fitful torchlight which illumined
the strange group, and lit up the pious paintings and epitaphs upon the
wall, read from a scroll the strange words, "And I saw under the altar
the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the
testimony which they held, and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How
long, Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on
them that dwell on the earth?" A great fear fell upon the soul of the
susceptible Greek, for the slain man seemed, in the solemn majesty of
death, to become an accusing judge.

Then turning his scroll the presbyter read on, "What are these arrayed
in white robes and whence came they? These are they which came out of
great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in
the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and
serve Him day and night in His temple.... They shall hunger no more,
neither thirst any more ... and God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes."

These holy words stirred strange emotions in the agitated breast of the
young Greek. Sweeter were they than