knowing her hapless love for Phlegon, she consented to accompany her. It cost her a pang to leave her father on that happy evening, but she knew that with him, no less than with herself, the claims of charity were paramount, and all the more towards those who seemed to need it most.

'Could you find no better youth to love than one of so dire a trade, Syra?' she gently asked the girl, as, with their heads covered with shawls, they went in the deepening dusk down the Via Sacra towards the amphitheatre.

It is not his fault, Junia. He hates it. His heart is naturally pitiful. He was brought up in the midst of luxury in the house of Pedanius, where he was a favourite. But Pedanius is a wretch, and once he treated Phlegon so cruelly that, in a fit of rage, the boy struck him. He might have been crucified for it, or flung to the lampreys; but, instead of that, Pedanius made him take to this work in the amphitheatre. How else could he live?'

"There are some lives worse than death,' said Junia.

'Well,' answered Syra; 'many a time he has longed to stab himself with his own sword; but . . . he loves me.'

'I did not mean that he should have killed himself,' said Junia; none of us have a right to fling away the life which

God gives us. I meant that it would be worth while facing any risk to escape doing wrong.'

Nothing can be wrong which our masters make us do,' answered Syra simply; and Junia could only sigh, for she knew that this was an axiom with both slaves and their masters.

By this time they had reached the outer door of the spoliarium, and, in answer to a whispered watchword, Phlegon admitted Syra, who promised to return very speedily, while Junia waited for her outside.

A few moments only had elapsed when Syra sprang out of the door agitated and breathless.

'Oh, Junia!' she cried; 'I did it! I did it!'

'Did what?'

'I have drunk some blood from a fresh wound, and I am cured.'

'Horrible!' said Junia, with a shudder, now for the first time understanding what Syra had come for.

'Yes; it was horrible,' said the girl; but how could I help

it? Every one who saw me in a fit, however slight, used to spit so as to avert the omen. I tried everything first. I tried galbanum, garlic, hellebore; I ate some young swallows; I tried to get a bit of the liver of an elephant, or the brain of a carnel, which they say is a certain remedy.1 But how could I? Never mind! I am cured now. But oh, Junia !' exclaimed the girl, as he lay there'-

'As who lay there?'

The young gladiator who fought so bravely to-day, and was dragged out by the hook as dead-well, he is not dead! His limbs were warm. I put my hand on his heart; there was a faint pulse.'

'I thought you knew him, for he was once a slave in your house that young Phrygian.'

'Onesimus' exclaimed Junia, with a startled cry.

Yes; that was his name. Did you not know that he fought as a net-thrower to-day?'

'No,' she answered faintly. We never go to the games. I had long lost sight of him, and thought that he had left Rome, or was dead. Syra, save him!'

'Phlegon will be glad to save him, if it can be done undiscovered. He loathes stabbing the poor gladiators when they have not quite been killed. Yet, if it were discovered that he spared but one of them, he would certainly be torn to pieces or crucified.'

Junia's mind was instantly made up. At all costs, Onesimus should have such chance of life secured to him as nature rendered possible. She told Syra to let Phlegon speak with her. Entering the spoliarium, and repressing the awful sense of repugnance which almost made her faint as the dim light of his lamp glimmered over the heap of mangled corpses, she recognised the features of Onesimus, and convinced herself that the spark of life was not wholly quenched in him. Then, putting into the hand of the confector a gold coin which had been the gift of Claudia, she entreated him to let her come back and remove the hapless youth. He consented, and, touched by her anguish, he himself took the body of the gladiator in his arms, laid him on his own pallet of straw, and poured some common Sabine wine down his throat. Junia,

1 Pliny, N. H. xxiii. 63 and passim.

meanwhile, thankful now for the slave-girl's company, went to the house of Linus, which was near at hand, and implored his aid. The good old pastor readily consented, and, when it was quite dark, took a mule and went with the two girls to the door of the spoliarium, where Phlegon awaited them.

He had not been idle. With such rough kindness as was possible to him he had washed away in tepid water the stains of blood from the breast and face of the poor gladiator, and had bandaged the deep wounds in his breast.

With tender care they lifted the still unconscious Phrygian upon a bundle of soft clothes which they had laid upon the mule. Linus, though the task was not without peril, agreed to tend and give him shelter for that night.

Then Junia fled back through the deserted streets. Nereus had begun to be anxious at her long delay, and listened to her story with a grave face. He had never liked Onesimus, and the youth's many sins and errors might well have shaken his confidence. But he and Junia had read not long before the letter which Paul of Tarsus had written to their brotherChristians in Corinth; and, if he wavered for a moment, he was decided in the cause of mercy by Junia's whispered words, Love suffereth long and is kind; love thinketh no evil; beareth all things; believeth all things; endureth all things; hopeth all things.'

It was agreed that after dark next evening Nereus should remove the dreadfully wounded sufferer from the house of Linus. Pudens, to whom he told the whole story, arranged, with Claudia's full consent, that Onesimus, as a former member of the household, should be concealed and tended in the hut of one of their country slaves who had charge of a little farm not far from Aricia. This peasant was a Christian, and he carried out the injunctions of his master with faithful kindness.

For many weeks Onesimus hung between life and death; at last, slowly, very slowly, he began to recover. Youth and the natural strength of his constitution, aided by the fresh air of the country, the pure milk, the quiet, the simple wholesome food, and the fact that there was nothing to thwart the recuperative forces of nature, won the day in the battle, and once more Death released the victim whom he seemed to hold securely in his grasp.

WHEN Onesimus recovered full consciousness he did not recoguise his unfamiliar surroundings, and was too weak to piece together the broken threads of his memory. Gradually he recalled the incidents of the past. He remembered the gladiators' school, the fight in the amphitheatre, the death of Glanydon, the recoil of feeling which prevented him from killing the Samnite Kalendio, even the sensation which he felt when the sword-thrust pierced his ribs. All the rest was darkness. Where was he? How had he been rescued from the spoliarium? How had he escaped the finishing blow of the confector?

Old Dromo, the vineyard-keeper, was very reticent, for he did not wish to endanger any of those who had taken part in the youth's deliverance. But the quick intelligence of Onesimus, working upon broken hints conjectured that Nereus and Junia, as members of his old familia, must have had some share in saving his life. Pudens, when he visited his vineyard to receive his accounts, came and saw him, and spoke a few kindly words; but the youth could see that the centurion had lost his old regard for him. He saw no one else, except occasionally one of the peasant neighbours. Junia, of course, came not. Such a visit would have been impossible to her maiden modesty. What could she do but silently combat a love which she felt to be hopeless? How could she ever marry a gladiator with such a past, and with so hopeless a probable future-a renegade, to all appearance, from the faith of Christ? She could but pray for him, and then strive to prevent her thoughts from turning to him any more. And Nereus came not to see him. He distrusted him, as he thought

of all the crimes through which he must have fallen, from the position of a Christian brother, into such a sink of degradation as a gladiators' school.

Lonely, disgraced, abandoned, in deadly peril of his life from a hundred sources if once he should be recognised, prostrated by weakness, often suffering torments from the pain of wounds which as yet were but half healed, Onesimus sank deeper and deeper into despair. Repentance and the love of God may often grow in the midst of adversity, like some Alpine gentian amid the snows; but sometimes there is a deadliness in the chill of hopeless misfortune which kills every green leaf of faith. The youth, smitten by so many calamities, began to feel as though the river of his life, which might have been so full and rejoicing, had lost itself in mud and sand. His sun had gone down while it yet was day. What was he

to do? How could he live? Why had they saved him? If Nereus and Junia and Pudeus had done it, by what means he knew not, it was a cruel kindness. Why should they have preserved him to a destiny so miserable? Junia must despise him now why should she have wished that his life should be spared?

He murmured against God in his heart. He cursed the day of his birth. He had had many chances and recklessly flung away one after another. Sometimes he thought of Christ and of all that he had heard from the lips of Paul in Ephesus about the Friend of publicans and sinners. But had he not denied the faith? Had he not lived like an apostate? If Christ could still love him, why was he left in all this misery and hopelessness? Why did no ray of light gleam through his darkened sky?

And thus he made his heart like the clay which the fire does but harden, not like the gold which it melts. But, notwithstanding his despair, he grew stronger. In two or three months his wounds healed, and he was free to leave his couch of hay and beechen leaves and to wander about the exquisite scenery of his temporary home. Aricia was built in a valley, the crater of an extinct volcano, at the foot of the Alban Mount. Below it the Lacus Nemorensis, 'the Mirror of Diana,' lay gleaming like a transparent emerald, while the steep lava slopes which descended to its level were rich with vineyards and groves and flowers.