managed, though with infinite difficulty, to conceal the gold piece which Octavia had given him, and he had noted that one of the underlings of the prison-keeper seemed to be not unkindly disposed to him. He was a man named Croto, chosen for the office because his stalwart proportions and herculean strength would make him formidable to any unruly slave; but there was a certain rough honesty and kindliness in his face which made Onesimus think that he might move his compassion.

Seizing his opportunity one day, as Croto passed him in the field, he boldly whispered,

Croto, if I gave you an aureus, would you swear to let me have a chance to escape?"

Croto looked long and hard at his beautiful face, and walked on without a word. But as he returned from his rounds he touched him, and said,

'Yes; I pity you. You are not like the rest of this herd of swine. Such things as an escape have happened ere now, and no one is the wiser. Masters don't care to ask many questions.' 'I will trust you,' said Onesimus; and tearing the aureus from the hem of his dark serge dress, he slipped it into Croto's hand.

'Keep awake to-night. The two who guard the door shall be drunk. Get up a disturbance after midnight; be near the door, and when it opens- The plan may fail, but it is the

only chance I can give you.'

Onesimus pointed in despair to the fetters on his feet.

'When a slave has shown himself quiet and reasonable, they are sometimes removed; and yours shall be. But the manacles on your wrists must remain; they are never removed at night.'

Onesimus made his plans. At the dead of night, when the prison was plunged in darkness for oil was much too dear to be wasted on chained slaves he raised a great outcry, as though he had been suddenly attacked. The slaves sprang up from their pallets, heavy and confused with sleep. But Onesimus had all his senses on the alert, and by violently pushing one, jostling against another, and striking a third, he soon had the whole place in a tumultuous uproar of rage and panic, during which he quietly crouched down beside the door. It was opened by the sleepy and drunken guardians, to find the cause of the disturbance, and, before they could be reinforced

by their more sober colleagues, Onesimus dashed the lamp out of the hand of one of them, tripped up the other, and ran to hide himself in the dark corner of an adjacent street, behind the Temple of Fortune. He succeeded, though with great pain, in forcing one hand free from the chain; and hiding the other, with the manacle which dangled from it, under his sleeve, he determined, at the first gleam of light, to try and find some assembly of Christians. He knew that it was their custom to meet at earliest dawn in secret places generally, if possible, the secluded entrance to some sand-pit- to sing hymns to Christ as God, before the slumbering pagan population began to stir. He was fortunate, for soon, with senses preternaturally quickened by peril, he heard at no great distance the faint sound of a hymn. He made his way towards the spot, and concealed himself till the congregation should break up. He knew that the last to leave was generally the Presbyter; and, waiting for him, he called him as he passed.

The Presbyter started, and said, 'Who goes there?' Onesimus stepped out of his hiding-place, and said, 'Oh, for the love of Christ, help me to get free from this chain!'

'Thou usest the language of a Christian,' said the Presbyter, but thy chain would prove thee a fugitive or a criminal.' 'I have erred,' said Onesimus; but I am not a criminal.' 'The Presbyter fixed on him a long and troubled look. 'Thou hast adjured me,' he said, 'in the name of Christ: I dare not refuse. But neither must I, for thy sake, imperil the brethren. Hide thyself again. I will send my son, Stephanus, to file thy chain, and then thou must depart. If thou hast erred, may Christ forgive thee!'

It was not many minutes before the young man came, and, without a word, filed the thinnest part of the manacle till Onesimus was free.

'Peace be with thee, brother!' said Stephanus. Men begin to stir. Thou wilt be in danger. We dare not shelter thee. It were best to hide here till nightfall. Food shall be brought thee.'

Search might be

Onesimus saw that the advice was good. made for him; but Antium was a large place, and the sand-pit might escape observation. It was so; bread and water were left near his hiding-place, and at night he made his way to Gaieta, which was twenty miles away from Antium.

CHAPTER XXXII

WANDERINGS OF AN OUTCAST

'Matrisque Deum chorus intrat, et ingens Semivir, obscæno facies reverenda minori,

Jam pridem cui rauca cohors, cui tympana cedunt
Plebeia, et Phrygia vestitur bucca tiara.'
Juv. Sat. vi. 511.

ONESIMUS was still in evil case. Everywhere he was looked upon with suspicious eyes. The mass of the population felt an aversion for fugitive slaves, and such, at the first glance, they conjectured him to be. His dress was a slave's dress he had no means of changing it and his hand still bore the bruises of the manacle. There was nothing for him to do but to beg his way, and he rarely got anything but scraps of food which barely sufficed to keep body and soul together. In those days there had long been visible that sure sign of national decadence,

'Wealth, a monster gorged 'Mid starving populations.'

'Huge estates,' says Pliny, 'ruined Italy.' Along the roads villas were visible here and there, among umbrageous groves of elm and chestnut, and their owners, to whom belonged the land for miles around, often did not visit these villas once in a year. Onesimus would gladly have laboured, but labour was a drug in the market. The old honest race of Roman farmers, who ate their beans and bacon in peace and plenty by fount and stream, and who each enlisted the services of a few free labourers and their sons, had almost entirely disappeared. The fields were tilled by gangs of slaves, whose only home was often an ergastulum, and who worked in chains. Luxury surrounded itself with hordes of superfluous and vicious ministers; but these were mainly purchased from foreign slave-markets, and a slave who had already been in

service was regarded as a veterator, up to every trick and villany for otherwise no master would have parted with him. A good, honest, sober, well-behaved slave, on whose fidelity and love a master could trust, was regarded as a treasure; and happy were the nobles or wealthy knights and burghers who possessed a few such slaves to rid them from the terror of being surrounded by thieves and secret foes. But how was Onesimus, now for a second time a fugitive, to find his way again into any honourable household? As he thought of the fair lot which might have befallen him, he sat down by the dusty road and wept. He was hungry, and in rags. Life lay wasted and disgraced behind him, while the prospect of the future was full of despair and shame. He was a prodigal among the swine in a far country, and no man gave him even the husks to eat.

Misery after misery assailed him. One night as he slept under a plane tree in the open air the wolves came down from the neighbouring hills, and he only saved his life from their hungry rage by the agility with which he climbed the tree. One day as he came near a villa to beg for bread he was taken for a spy of bandits. The slaves set a fierce Molossian dog upon him, and he would have been torn to pieces if he had not dropped on all fours, and confronted the dog with such a shout that the Molossus started back, and Onesimus had time to dash a huge stone against his snarling teeth, which drove him howling away.

For one who thus wandered through the country there were abundant proofs of the wretchedness and wickedness of the lower classes of Pagan life. He observed one day the blackened ruins of a large farm-house with its ricks and cattlesheds, and not far from it he saw the white skeleton of a man chained to the hollow trunk of an aged fig-tree. The spot seemed to be shunned by all human beings, as though the curse of God were upon it. Onesimus was wandering curiously about it, and trying to appease his hunger with a few ears of corn from one of the half-burnt ricks, when the shout of a shepherd on a distant hill attracted his attention. He went to the man, who shared with him some of his black barley-bread, and told him that he had shouted to warn him from an ill-omened and fatal place.' Why ill-omened and fatal?' asked Onesimus. The place belonged,' answered the

6

peasant, to a master who had entrusted the care of it to a head slave. This man, though married, deserted his wife for a free woman of foreign extraction, whom his master had brought to the villa. The fury of his slave-wife turned into raging madness. She burnt all her husband's accounts and possessions. She thrust a torch into every rick and barn, and when she saw the flames mount high, tied herself to her little son, and precipitated herself with him into a deep well. The master, furious at his losses, and shocked by such a tragedy, inflicted a terrible vengeance on the guilty slave. Stripping him naked, he chained him to the fig-tree, of which the hollow trunk had been the immemorial nest of swarms of bees. He smeared the wretch's body with honey, and left him to perish.' The bleaching skeleton had become the terror of the neighbourhood. No one dared to touch it, and the place, haunted with dark spirits of crime and retribution, was shunned far and wide as an accursed spot.

Sickened with miseries, Onesimus gradually made his way to Pompeii. Every street and wall of the bright little Greek town bore witness to the depths of degradation into which the inhabitants had fallen, and the youth found that the radiant scene, under the shadow of Vesuvius and its glorious vineyards by that blue and sparkling sea, was a garden of God indeed, but, like that of the Cities of the Plain, awaiting the fire and brimstone which were to fall on it from heaven. He was specially disgusted because, alien as he was now from all Christian truth, he saw on the walls of a large assembly-room in the Street of the Baths a mass of scribblings full of deadly insults towards the Christians. One in particular offended him, for, by way of coarse satire on some Christian teacher, it said:

'Mulus hic muscellas docuit.'
'Here a mule taught small flies.'

It was evidently no place for any one who still loved Christianity. Hurrying from its fascination of corruption, to which he felt it only too possible that he might succumb, he was for some time reduced to the very brink of starvation, and was at last driven to live on such fruits and berries as he could pluck from the trees and hedges. Once, while he was trying to reach some wild crab-apples in a