“Lift up your hands and worship the divine Caesar,” cried the tribune, who with the rest of the lookers-on had watched her movements with keen excitement.

Trembling, she set her basket on the ground and tried to withdraw her hand from her brother’s; but the blind boy held it fast.  He fully understood what was required of his sister, he knew full well, from the history of many martyrs that had been told him, what fate awaited her and him if they resisted the Roman’s demand; but he felt no fear and whispered to her: 

“We will not obey his desires Martha; we will not pray to idols, we will cling faithfully to the Redeemer.  Turn me away from the image, and I will say ‘Our Father.’”

With a loud voice and his lustreless eyes upraised to Heaven, the boy said the Lord’s prayer.  Selene had first set his face towards the river, and then she herself turned her back on the statue; then, lifting her hands, she followed the child’s example.

Helios clung to her closely, her loudly uttered prayer was one with his, and neither of them saw or heard anything more of what befell them.

The blind boy had a vision of a distant but glorious light, the maiden of a blissful life made beautiful by love, as she was flung to the ground in front of the statue of Hadrian, and the excited mob rushed upon her and her faithful little brother.  The military tribune tried in vain to hold back the populace, and by the time the soldiers had succeeded in driving the excited mob away from their victims, both the young hearts, in the midst of the triumph of their faith, in the midst of their hopes of an eternal and blissful life, had ceased to beat for ever.

The occurrence disturbed the captain and made him very uneasy.  This girl, this beautiful boy, who lay before him pale corpses, had been worthy of a better fate, and he might be made to answer for them; for the law forbade that any Christian should be punished for his faith without a judge’s sentence.  He therefore commanded that the dead should be carried at once to the house to which they belonged, and threatened every one, who should that day set foot in the Christian quarter, with the severest punishment.

The beggar went off, shrieking and shouting, to his brother’s house to tell the mistress that lame Martha, who had nursed her daughter to death, was slain; but he gained an evil reward, for the poor woman bewailed Selene as if she had been her own child, and cursed him and her murderers.

Before sundown Hadrian arrived at Besa, where he found magnificent tents pitched to receive him and his escort.  The disaster that had befallen his statue was kept a secret from him, but he felt anxious and ill.  He wished to be perfectly alone, and desired Antinous to go to see the city before it should be dark.  The Bithynian joyfully embraced this permission as a gift of the gods; he hurried through the decorated high streets, and made a boy guide him from thence into the Christian quarter.  Here the streets were like a city of the dead; not a door was open, not a man to be seen.