For some time a painful silence reigned round the large table, to-day so sparely furnished with guests.

At last Petrus turned to his guest and said, “You were to tell me how the shepherdess Miriam lost her life in the struggle.  She had run away from our house—­”

“Up the mountain,” added Hermas.  “She supplied my poor father with water like a daughter.”

“You see, mother,” interrupted Marthana, “she was not bad-hearted—­ I always said so.”

“This morning,” continued Hermas, nodding in sad assent to the maiden, “she followed my father to the castle, and immediately after his fall, Paulus told me, she rushed away from it, but only to seek me and to bring me the sad news.  We had known each other a long time, for years she had watered her goats at our well, and while I was still quite a boy and she a little girl, she would listen for hours when I played on my willow pipe the songs which Paulus had taught me.  As long as I played she was perfectly quiet, and when I ceased she wanted to hear more and still more, until I had too much of it and went away.  Then she would grow angry, and if I would not do her will she would scold me with bad words.  But she always came again, and as I had no other companion and she was the only creature who cared to listen to me, I was very well-content that she should prefer our well to all the others.  Then we grew order and I began to be afraid of her, for she would talk in such a godless way—­and she even died a heathen.  Paulus, who once overheard us, warned me against her, and as I had long thrown away the pipe and hunted beasts with my bow and arrow whenever my father would let me, I was with her for shorter intervals when I went to the well to draw water, and we became more and more strangers; indeed, I could be quite hard to her.  Only once after I came back from the capital something happened—­but that I need not tell you.  The poor child was so unhappy at being a slave and no doubt had first seen the light in a free-house.

“She was fond of me, more than a sister is of a brother—­and when my father was dead she felt that I ought not to learn the news from any one but herself.  She had seen which way I had gone with the Pharanites and followed me up, and she soon found me, for she had the eyes of a gazelle and the ears of a startled bird.  It was not this time difficult to find me, for when she sought me we were fighting with the Blemmyes in the green hollow that leads from the mountain to the sea.  They roared with fury like wild beasts, for before we could get to the sea the fishermen in the little town below had discovered their boats, which they had hidden under sand and stones, and had carried them off to their harbor.  The boy from Raithu who accompanied me, had by my orders kept them in sight, and had led the fishermen to the hiding-place.  The watchmen whom they had left with the boats had fled, and had reached their companions who were fighting round the castle; and at least two hundred of them had been sent back to the shore to recover possession of the boats and to punish the fishermen.  This troop met us in the green valley, and there we fell to fighting.