27 Sign of Beauty, Sign of Glory “Our people have known of the place and kept it secret,” said Judas. “It is here, buried under earth and stones.” “We shall see,” said the old woman, and she raised her cane toward the soldiers. They were carrying picks and shovels. “Dig here,” she said. Nothing but skulls The old woman had seen much in her time. She was but a girl, helping her father work the busy inn he kept in the old city by the gulf; shipmen and camel drovers, day after day, barbarians to the north, pagans all round, and Christians, those strange people, trying to honor their Lord in peace, yet willing to die for him when the persecutions came. One day he showed up, Constantius the military commander, nicknamed the Paleface, the man she honored and loved. Husband and wife then went west, to live not in palaces but in camps along the Danube and the cold Rhine, keeping the Germans on the far side. She had seen many a man die on a cross. She bore an only son to him, named Little Constantius, that is, Constantinus. So long ago it was. Constantius was true and not true to his name. He was constant in his love for the empire, constant in courage, constant in just administration of the laws. He was fair to Christians when such fairness was frowned upon. And he was constant in ambition, so when the chance came for
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