"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