ucharist in the basilica of Mary,"
replied the Bishop. "It is just now the hour--but no, stop. You are a
stranger here you say; you have run away from your master--and you are
young, very young and very.... It is dark too. Where are you intending
to sleep?"

"I do not know," said Agne, and her eyes filled with tears.

"That is what I call courage!" murmured Theophilus to the priest, and
then he added to Agne: "Well, thanks to the saints, we have asylums
for such as you, here in the city. That scribe will give you a document
which will secure your admission to one. So you come from Antioch? Then
there is the refuge of Seleucus of Antioch. To what parish--[Parochia in
Latin]--did your parents belong?"

"To that of John the Baptist?"

"Where Damascius was the preacher?"

"Yes, holy Father. He was the shepherd of our souls."

"What! Damascius the Arian?" cried the Bishop. He drew his fine and
stately figure up to its most commanding height and closed his thin lips
in august contempt, while Irenaeus, clasping his hands in horror, asked
her:

"And you--do you, too, confess the heresy of Arius?"

"My parents were Arians," replied Agne in much surprise. "They taught me
to worship the godlike Saviour."

"Enough!" exclaimed the Bishop severely. "Come Irenaeus."

He nodded to the priest to follow him, opened the curtain and went in
first with supreme dignity.

Agne stood as if a thunderbolt had fallen, pale, trembling and
desperate. Then was she not a Christian? Was it a sin in a child to
accept the creed of her parents? And were those who, after charitably
extending a saving hand, had so promptly withdrawn it--were they
Christians in the full meaning of the All-merciful Redeemer?

Agonizing doubts of everything that she had hitherto deemed sacred and
inviolable fell upon her soul; doubts of everything in heaven and earth,
and not merely of Christ and of his godlike, or divine goodness--for
what difference was there to her apprehension in the meaning of the
two words which set man to hunt and persecute man? In the distress and
hopeless dilemma in which she found herself, she shed no tears; she
simply stood rooted to the spot where she had heard the Bishop's
verdict.

Presently her attention was roused by the shrill voice of an old writer
who called out to one of the younger assistants.

"That girl disturbs me, Petubastis; show her out." Petubastis, a pretty
Egyptian lad, was more than glad of an interruption to h