there and Junia; and from the household of Cæsar he recognised Tryphæna and Tryphosa and Herodion; and there were Linus, and Cletus, and the soldiers Urban and Celsus, and Claudia Dicæosyne, wife of a freedman of Narcissus, and Andronicus, and Alexander, and Rufus, sons of Simon of Cyrene who had borne Christ's cross, and many more.

In a single glance he took in the presence of these, and a sense of danger flashed across him, lest any one of them, perhaps a false brother, should penetrate his disguise as Titus had done. But it was not at them that he looked. His whole being was absorbed in the gaze which he fixed on him whom he had always heard spoken of as the Apostle Paulus.

Yes, there he stood; his face thinner and more worn than of old, his hair now almost white with an age which was reckoned less by years than by labours and sorrows; but otherwise just as he was when Philemon had gone from Colossæ and taken with him his boy-slave to listen to the words of impassioned reasoning and burning inspiration which Paul poured forth at Ephesus in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. What a flood of memories surged over the young Phrygian's soul as he saw him! As though his life, since then, had been written in lightning, he thought in one instant of that long tale of shame and sorrow from the theft at Colossæ to the wanderings with the priests of the Syrian goddess, the gladiators' school, the attempted murder at Aricia. It all flashed upon his recollection, and he felt as if he could sink to the earth for shame. His first impulse was to spring forward and cast himself at the Apostle's feet. But he heard Julius say that they had halted too long, and that he must press forward with his charge. The word 'Forward, soldiers!' was given, and Onesimus hid himself behind a tomb, only rejoining Titus when the Christians had passed by. Titus seemed lost in thought, but as they were near Pomponia's house, he said:

Onesimus, did you see that prisoner?'

'Yes. And I saw him when I was a boy in Ephesus.'

'I know men when I see them,' said Titus.

and then he repeated the Greek line

'He is a man,'

'How gracious a thing is a man, if he be but a man.'1

1 Ὡς χαριέν ἐστ ̓ ἄνθρωπος ἢν ἄνθρωπος ᾖ.

He is a Jew; he is small and bent; he is ugly ; yet somehow his ugliness is more beautiful tenfold than the beauty of Paris or Tigellinus.'

'You should hear him speak!' said Onesimus.

Titus shrugged his shoulders. 'A Christian!' he said; 'a worshipper of a Jew whom they tell me Pilatus crucified ! And yet,' he added, there is something more in these Christians than I can fathom. Britannicus was very much struck by them, and I believe Pomponia is a Christian. She told me once that "no weapon forged against these Christians prospers." Pilatus, they say, came to a bad end.'

'What happened to him?' asked Onesimus. They say he became a haunted man. His wife Claudia Procula turned Christian. He was banished to Helvetia and there committed suicide; and his ghost haunts a bare mountain, and is forever wringing and washing its hands. But I believe it is all nonsense,' said Titus; and here we are at Pomponia's house.'

They found the gracious noble lady with her boy by her side in the peristyle tending her flowers among her doves, which were so tame that they would perch on her head and shoulder, and coo softly, as they suffered both her and the young Aulus to smooth their plumage.

'Bathed in such hues as when the peacock's neck
Assumes its brightest tint of amethyst

Embathed in emerald glory.'

The heart of Pomponia was open to every kind impulse, and as there was little difficulty in finding room for another slave in the ample palace of a Roman noble like Aulus Plautius, Onesimus, saved once more from ruin and destitution, slept that night in the cell of a new master.

Meanwhile Julius and his prisoner had proceeded on their way. Leaving the Circus Maximus on their left, and going along the Vicus Tuscus, amid temples and statues and arches of triumph, they passed the Prætorian Camp, built by Sejanus, near the Nomentan Road, and reached the Excubitorium and the barracks of that section of the Prætorians whose turn it was to keep guard over the person of the Emperor. Here the centurion found Burrus, and in consigning to his charge the prisoner who had appealed unto Casar, handed to him

at the same time some letters respecting him from Felix Festus, and King Agrippa. Burrus read them with interest.

'This is a remarkable prisoner,' he said. 'The Jews accuse him of sedition and profanity; but they have sent neither evidence nor witnesses.'

We passed through a fearful storm off Crete,' said Julius, 'and were shipwrecked at Malta. I hear rumours that another large vessel, which sailed soon after us from Cæsarea, with many Jews on board, foundered at sea. I expect that some of the accusers of Paulus perished with her.'

'Well, if so, his case will be delayed. He is innocent, I suppose?'

'Perfectly innocent, I am certain. Christian as he is, it is such men whom the gods love. We all of us should have perished at sea but for his wisdom and good sense, and if we had listened to his advice we should not have been wrecked at all.'

'Ha!' said Burrus; he shall be well treated.' He called to a Prætorian and said: The prisoner in the outer room may hire a lodging for himself. He will, of course, be in custody. The men must take their turns to be chained to him; but mark choose out the kindest and most honest men for the work, and let them understand that I order him to be as gently dealt with as can be, consistently with his security.'

That night the dream of the life of Paul of Tarsus was accomplished; he was sleeping in Rome. He was an ambassador, though an ambassador in bonds.

THE centurion Julius was genuinely pleased with the invitation of Titus, and duly presented himself at the modest house of Vespasian. The other guests were Aulus Plautius and Pomponia, King Caradoc, Pudens and Claudia, and Seneca, together with several members of the family, and among them Vespasian's brother, Flavius Sabinus, who had just been appointed Præfect of the City, in the place of Pedanius Secundus. The fortunes of the Flavian house were rising rapidly; but Sabinus, an eminent soldier, with his blushing honours fresh upon him, was regarded as the head of the family.

Vespasian was poor, and was also fond of money. That he had not amassed a fortune in his various commands was much to his credit. His house, afterwards occupied by Josephus, was so unpretending as to excite the wonder of those who saw it after he had become Emperor, and his entertainments were usually marked by a more than Sabine simplicity.

On this occasion, however, since a king, a prime minister, and a consular- his old commander- who had enjoyed the honour of sharing an Emperor's triumphs, were among his guests, Vespasian had donned the unwonted splendour of his

'triumphal ornaments,' a flowered tunic, over which flowed a purple robe, embroidered with palm branches in gold and silver thread. He was not half at ease in this splendid apparel, and told his wife Canis that he was an old fool for his pains. The entertainment was sufficient, though Otho would have thought it hardly good enough for his freedmen. The board was graced with old Sabine and Etruscan ware of great antiquity and curious workmanship, as well as with objects of interest which Vespasian had bought when he was an officer in Thrace, Crete, and Cyrene.

But Vespasian himself, who was sturdily indifferent to fashion, and took pleasure in showing how little he regarded the criticisms of Roman dandyism, drank out of a little silver cup which had belonged to his grandmother, and which he would not have exchanged for the loveliest crystal on the table of Petronius. And Caradoc, as he sat there in his simple dress and golden torque, was far more happy at that modest entertainment than he would have been at the house of any other of the Roman nobles.

The party was, so to speak, a British party, for most of them were familiar with the storm-swept Northern island, which was regarded as the Ultima Thule of civilisation. That day Pudens had received an appointment to go to Britain and support as well as he could the wavering fortunes of Suetonius Paulinus. Caradoc was permitted to return with him and take up his abode at Noviomagus, the town of the Regni. They were to sail as early as possible from Ostia. More than this, Aulus Plautius, to whose powerful influence these appointments had been due, had secured for his young friend Titus the excellent position of a tribune of the soldiers to the army in Britain. It was a graceful recognition of the services which Vespasian had rendered to him twenty years before, when, as his legate of the legion, he had fought thirty battles, captured more than twenty towns, and reduced the Isle of Wight to subjection. It was in Britain, as Tacitus says, that Vespasian had first been shown to the Fates.' The whole party were in the highest spirits. The old king rejoiced to think that he should rest at last in the land of his fathers. Claudia longed to escape from the suffocating atmosphere of Roman luxury. Pudens knew that in Rome his Christian convictions might speedily bring him into peril, and that in far-off Britain he could breathe