“Let me go with you,” said Marthana.  “No, no; you stay here with your mother.”

“And do you think that I can wait here?” asked Dorothea.  “I am going with you.”

“There is much here for you to do,” replied Petrus evasively, “and we must climb the hill quickly.”

“I should certainly delay you,” sighed the mother, “but take the girl with you; she has a light and lucky hand.”

“If you think it best,” said the senator, and he left the room.

While the mother and daughter prepared everything for the night-expedition, and came and went, they found time to put many questions and say many affectionate words to Sirona.  Marthana, even without interrupting her work, set food and drink for the weary woman on the table by which she had sunk on a seat; but she hardly moistened her lips.

When the young girl showed her the basket that she had filled with medicine and linen bandages, with wine and pure water, Sirona said, “Now lend me a pair of your strongest sandals, for mine are all torn, and I cannot follow the men without shoes, for the stones are sharp, and cut into the flesh.”

Marthana now perceived for the first time the blood on her friend’s feet, she quickly took the lamp from the table and placed it on the pavement, exclaiming, as she knelt down in front of Sirona and took her slender white feet in her hand to look at the wounds on the soles, “Good heavens! here are three deep cuts!”

In a moment she had a basin at hand, and was carefully bathing the wounds in Sirona’s feet; while she was wrapping the injured foot in strips of linen Dorothea came up to them.

“I would,” she said, “that Polykarp were only here now, this roll would suffice to bind you both.”  A faint flush overspread Sirona’s cheeks, but Dorothea was suddenly conscious of what she had said, and Marthana gently pressed her friend’s hand.

When the bandage was securely fixed, Sirona attempted to walk, but she succeeded so badly that Petrus, who now came back with his friend Magadon and his sons, and several slaves, found it necessary to strictly forbid her to accompany them.  He felt sure of finding his son without her, for one of Magadon’s people had often carried bread and oil to old Serapion and knew his cave.

Before the senator and his daughter left the room he whispered a few words to his wife, and together they went up to Sirona.

“Do you know,” he asked, “what has happened to your husband?”

“Sirona nodded.  “I heard it from Paulus,” she answered.  “Now I am quite alone in the world.”

“Not so,” replied Petrus.  “You will find shelter and love under our roof as if it were your father’s, so long as it suits you to stay with us.  You need not thank us—­we are deeply in your debt.  Farewell till we meet again wife.  I would Polykarp were safe here, and that you had seen his wound.  Come, Marthana, the minutes are precious.”