stars shone in the vast heavens above, red ones in the great plain
below. And from every side rose the low, confused murmur of voices,
with the lowing of oxen and the neighing of horses.

Simon had been a soldier and a man of affairs before ever he forsook the
world, and the meaning of all that he had seen was clear to him.
History told him how the Roman world had ever been assailed by fresh
swarms of Barbarians, coming from the outer darkness, and that the
Eastern Empire had already, in its fifty years of existence since
Constantine had moved the capital of the world to the shores of the
Bosphorus, been tormented in the same way. Gepidae and Heruli,
Ostrogoths and Sarmatians, he was familiar with them all. What the
advanced sentinel of Europe had seen from this lonely outlying hill, was
a fresh swarm breaking in upon the Empire, distinguished only from the
others by its enormous, incredible size and by the strange aspect of the
warriors who composed it. He alone of all civilized men knew of the
approach of this dreadful shadow, sweeping like a heavy storm-cloud
from the unknown depths of the east. He thought of the little Roman
posts along the Dneister, of the ruined Dacian wall of Trajan behind
them, and then of the scattered, defenceless villages which lay with
no thought of danger over all the open country which stretched down to
the Danube. Could he but give them the alarm! Was it not, perhaps, for
that very end that God had guided him to the wilderness?

Then suddenly he remembered his Arian neighbour, who dwelt in the cave
beneath him. Once or twice during the last year he had caught a glimpse
of his tall, bent figure hobbling round to examine the traps which he
laid for quails and partridges. On one occasion they had met at the
brook; but the old theologian waved him away, as if he were a leper.
What did he think now of this strange happening? Surely their