injustice than we do, and that you have once more proved to me, but, in carrying justice out, you are not our superiors.  The Gauls may remain in our house, and do you take Polykarp severely to task, but in the first instance as his friend.  Or would it not be better if you left it to me?  He was so happy in thinking of the competition of his lions, and in having to work for the great building in the capital, and now it is all over.  I wish you had already broken that to him; but love stories are women’s affairs, and you know how good the boy is to me.  A mother’s word sometimes has more effect than a father’s blow, and it is in life as it is in war; the light forces of archers go first into the field, and the heavily armed division stays in the background to support them; then, if the enemy will not yield, it comes forward and decides the battle.  First let me speak to the lad.  It may be that he threw the rose into Sirona’s window only in sport, for she plays with his brothers and sisters as if she herself were one of them.  I will question him; for if it is so, it would be neither just nor prudent to blame him.  Some caution is needed even in giving a warning; for many a one, who would never have thought of stealing, has become a thief through false suspicion.  A young heart that is beginning to love, is like a wild boy who always would rather take the road he is warned to avoid, and when I was a girl, I myself first discovered how much I liked you, when the Senator Aman’s wife—­who wanted you for her own daughter—­advised me to be on my guard with you.  A man who has made such good use of his time, among all the temptations of the Greek Sodom, as Polykarp, and who has won such high praise from all his teachers and masters, cannot have been much injured by the light manners of the Alexandrians.  It is in a man’s early years that he takes the bent which he follows throughout his later life, and that he had done before he left our house.  Nay—­even if I did not know what a good fellow Polykarp is—­I need only look at you to say, ’A child that was brought up by this father, could never turn out a bad man.’”

Petrus sadly shrugged his shoulders, as though he regarded his wife’s flattering words as mere idle folly, and yet he smiled, as he asked, “Whose school of rhetoric did you go to?  So be it then; speak to the lad when he returns from Raithu.  How high the moon is already; come to rest—­Antonius is to place the altar in the early dawn, and I wish to be present.”

CHAPTER IX.

Miriam’s ears had not betrayed her.  While she was detained at supper, Hermas had opened the courtyard-gate; he came to bring the senator a noble young buck, that he had killed a few hours before, as a thank-offering for the medicine to which his father owed his recovery.  It would no doubt have been soon enough the next morning, but he could find no rest up on the mountain, and did not—­and indeed did not care to—­conceal from himself the fact, that the wish to give expression to his gratitude attracted him down into the oasis far less than the hope of seeing Sirona, and of hearing a word from her lips.