Eumenes and Hannah were in the right.  It was not the widow but the little blind boy who had won her to Christianity.  The child’s influence had proceeded in a strange course.  In the first instance the promises of the slave Master that Helios should some day meet his father again in a shining realm among beautiful angels had a powerful effect on the blind child’s tender heart and vivid imagination.  In Hannah’s house his hopes had received fresh nurture, and Mary and the widow told him much about their kind and loving God and His Son who loved children and had invited them to come to Him.  When Selene began to recover and he was permitted to talk to her he poured out to her all his delight at what he had heard from the women.  At first, to be sure, his sister took no pleasure in these fanciful fables and tried to shake his belief and lead back his heart to the old gods.  But while she tried to guide the child, by degrees she felt compelled to follow in his path; at first with wavering steps, but dame Hannah helped her by her example and with many words of good counsel.  She only taught her doctrine when the girl asked her questions and begged for information.  All that here surrounded Selene breathed of love and peace, and the child felt this, spoke of it, forced her to acknowledge it, and, in his own person, was the first object on which to exercise a wish hitherto unknown to her, to be herself loving and lovable.  The boy’s firm faith, which was not to be shaken by any reasoning or by any of the myths which she knew, touched her deeply and led to her asking Hannah what was the real bearing of one and another of his statements.  It had always seemed a comfort to her that the miseries of our earthly life would come to an end with death; but Helios left her without a reply when he said in a sad voice: 

“Do you feel no longing, then, to see our father and mother again?”

To see her mother again!  This thought gave her an interest in the next world, and dame Hannah fanned the spark of hope in her soul into flame.

Selene had seen and suffered much misery, and was accustomed to call the gods cruel.  Helios told her that God and the Saviour were good and kind, and loved human beings as their children.

“Is it not good and kind,” asked he, “of our Heavenly Father to lead us to dame Hannah?”

“Yes, but we have all been torn apart,” said Selene.  “Never mind,” said the child confidently, “we shall all meet in Heaven.”

As she got well Selene asked after each of the children and Hannah described all the families into which they had been received.  The widow did not look as if she spoke falsely, and the little ones, when they came to see her, confirmed her report, and yet Selene could hardly believe in the accuracy of the pictures drawn of their lives in the houses of the Christians.