While I was contemplating sadly the frightful fate which was in store for me, a little lid or trap-door in the ceiling about a foot square was opened, and a basket was lowered by a cord. This basket contained a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. I took out the bread and water; the basket rose again by the cord, and the lid was closed. This was the routine, day after day, without variation. Not even an arm or a hand could be detected when the lid was raised. Nothing could be seen or heard.

There was one thing that varied the monotony, and only one. Every day, about noon, the door in the passage was opened, the light admitted, and the ugly face and head of Magistus were protruded through the little window. There he stood gazing at me for some minutes, sometimes for half an hour, on several occasions for one or two hours. He did not speak. He glared at me with a stony malignity which is indescribable. When he had satiated his cruel appetite with a sight of my sufferings, he retired.

Thus passed away week after week, month after month. My sufferings were horrible. I wasted and weakened day by day both in mind and body. The air of the dungeon had become foul and sickening. The bread and water had become tasteless and repulsive. The silence, the solitude, the darkness, were fearful.

And now a strange and almost incredible thing occurred. I do not believe any one can comprehend what I have to say, unless he has been shut up alone in the dark for weeks and months; with the mind preying morbidly on itself for want of external objects to give it healthful activity; wasted by low diet and a mephitic atmosphere, by silence whose terror is indescribable, and by solitude which of itself can drive to madness.

I did not look at the stony, cruel face of Magistus; but the idea that he was looking at me began to take a singular and painful possession of my mind. I could not get rid of it. I walked, whistled, talked, sang to myself, all in vain. The idea that a hideous face was in the window; that the black, fierce eyes were fixed upon me; that I could not prevent it; hung over my mind like the vultures gnawing at the heart of the chained Prometheus. It became a positive torture.

Thus I lived a daily death for many weeks; ignorant of all things without; never hearing the sound of a human voice; buried alive; until hope died in my bosom, and despair became my bedfellow, and fear my familiar, and even memory ceased to weave her beautiful airy tissues, consoling me for the loss of a future by her glorification of the past.

At first I used to love to review all the incidents of my life, both on earth and in the world of spirits. I spent my long and lonesome leisure in organizing my knowledge, analyzing my experiences, and building up from them a grand philosophy of mind and matter.

I saw plainly that such a philosophy was needed to give intellectual strength and stability to the young church of Christ. I knew that no height of piety, no fervor of faith, no frenzy of love can secure a church from the cold and critical assaults of the human understanding. Devotion may be the soul of a church, but Truth is its body: and no religion without an impregnable basis of philosophy, can be anything but a transient fervor. It must inevitably perish by a gradual disintegration. For this mode of thinking I was indebted to the Athenian philosophers.

I therefore arranged all my ideas into philosophical form, and contemplated with intense pleasure the perfect system of spiritual and natural truth which I had eliminated from my accumulated materials. It is astonishing how one spiritual truth leads to another; how all things are connected together; so that the greatest things are repeated in the least, and the smallest fragment is an image of the whole.

With increasing debility and despair I ceased to think steadily of these grand and beautiful subjects. I spent much of the time in praying for deliverance, and much in brooding over the possible fate and sorrows of my poor sisters. After a while I discovered that my ideas were strangely confused, especially after those terrible visits of Magistus, which I began to regard with absolute horror. I could not distinguish between what had happened in one world and what in the other; between dreams and realities; between my hopes and my fears. The awful suspicion broke upon me that I was losing my reason, that I was on the verge of madness.

“Oh, my uncle! why do you thus persecute an innocent and helpless creature? May God have mercy on your soul as you shall have mercy on me!”

He made no reply, but stared fixedly at me. Not a muscle of his face moved. No ray of emotion was visible on his features. He seemed to be as deaf and dumb as a statue. I might as well have appealed to a tiger or a crocodile for pity. I was about to repeat my supplication, but his look appalled me; and I sank, pale, rigid and stupefied under the old spell of fascination.

There was no hope.

Let no one suppose that this instance of cruelty is incredible. Its hereditary germ is concealed in our hearts. It begins developing in the child when he tortures the dumb creatures in his power. To delight in witnessing pain is the basest and most infernal of all our passions; but it is common enough. Every court, every camp, every government, and alas! almost every religion in the world, has its secret records which could unfold tales of horror worse even than this. Man invested with irresponsible power, is naturally a tyrant; and the difference between a tyrant and a devil consists only in their different degrees of development.

I learned, moreover, in the spiritual world the singular fact, that men or women addicted to sensual pleasures unregulated by religious ideas, however kind and gentle they may seem, have in their hearts a tendency to the most direful cruelties which rarely come to the surface in this world, but which rage in hell with unabating fury.

One morning a wonderful thing occurred. How small a thing may seem wonderful to those who are shut out from the sweet presences of man and nature!

On taking the bread and water out of the basket, I found a delicate little rose-bud at the bottom of it. Let those who see every day a thousand flowers in the golden palaces of the spring, pity and excuse the frantic pleasure which this tiny one gave to a poor prisoner, who had been shut up for months in darkness, surrounded by stone walls and demons.

I seized the sweet messenger of love, for such I construed it to be; strained my eyes in the twilight to discover the green and crimson of its livery; and imagined that its delicate perfume was a little voice whispering to me of pity and of succor. I wept over it. I kissed it. I invested it with life. I called it Mercury, Iris, Hebe, Cupid, Apollo—as a child endows her doll with vitality, speaks to it, caresses it, nurses it. Perhaps all nature would be alive to us if our hearts were only childlike.

This flower was a link that reconnected me with the great world above, so long lost to me. It was a delicate thread that led me up into the open air under the blue sky, and out into the green fields and into the gardens where the winds wrestled playfully with the trees, and all the flowers ducked their little heads at the great rough sport of the larger creatures. The beautiful forms and colors of a luxuriant nature rushed upon me with a ravishing sweetness. My memory and imagination were stimulated into rosy life. I wept for joy.

This little event shed still greater light and blessing upon me. My mind became clear; my memory acute; the fear of madness left me. My past sufferings seemed like a dream. With hope I received new life, new courage. When Magistus came, I found that I was freed from the spell of his fascination. I did not look at him. I sat down immediately underneath his window. I repeated comforting verses of Scripture to myself until he went away.

That day was spent in the most delicious castle-building. At night I slept, but was visited by a disagreeable dream. I thought Magistus had taken my rose-bud from me, and buried it in the ground; and I awoke with a great cry, for I suddenly remembered that what we had called the rose-bud was my sister Mary.

How eagerly I watched the next descent of the basket, for more comfort, more tokens of love, more hope! It came; but there was in it only bread and water. My heart sank within me. I would have called out loudly to my unseen friend, to know why I was deserted; but I feared my unseen enemy; for I felt certain that Magistus always watched the person who let down the basket.

The same things occurred the next day and the next. No more flowers; no more meat; no messages; no hopes; only bread, water and Magistus. Was it all a hallucination? Again I began to sicken and despair.

One morning the basket came down with only bread in it. No water! I knew it was a sentence of death. Magistus was revenging my escape from the fascination of his evil eye. Before night I began to feel the horrors of thirst. Awful sensation! I dreamed of water; of the fountain in my father’s courtyard; of the blue Ægean near Athens, so soft, so beautiful; of the Salt Sea and the tent of Barabbas; of the snow-fields and icebergs of the frozen zone in the world of spirits.

All, all depended on the next descent of the little basket. I watched its coming as a prisoner listens to the voice of the judge, for life or death. Alas! bread alone; no water. Torture, madness, death, were now inevitable.

I took out the loaf, which somehow or other seemed heavier than usual. To my amazement, the basket did not rise, but was jerked impatiently up and down by the person holding the cord.

“What can this mean?” said I to myself.

I broke the loaf. It was scooped out and contained, in the cavity thus formed, a piece of parchment and a very small ink-horn with a pen.

“What shall I do?”

A light came into my mind as brilliant as the sun. I was calm and self-possessed; my good angel recalled to me the friendly words of Pilate at our parting:

“Send for me if you get into trouble.”

I wrote as clearly and as rapidly as possible in the dim twilight:

“Tell all to Pontius Pilate. Be quick or I die!”

I put the parchment into the loaf and pressed its crust closely together again.

I now heard the stern voice of Magistus exclaim to some one:

“What are you dallying about?”

The basket ascended. I trembled. I almost fainted. My entire hope, my life, hung upon a thread—upon a hair!

How fortunate it was that I did not send up the parchment alone! My good angel guided me. Magistus looked into the basket, and seeing it ascend with the loaf in it, exclaimed,

“He is too weak to take out his bread. I will give him a little wine.”

He seemed to walk away and my heart commenced beating again.

At that moment another little flower, another sunbeam, fell from the ceiling to my feet: and the lid was closed.

Magistus came earlier than usual, and threw me down a goat-skin bottle of wine and water. I thanked him with the utmost deliberation. He did not speak in reply. He only wished to fan the embers of life, to prolong my sufferings. Human nature revolts at the contemplation of such a demon. Such men are indeed rare, but such evil spirits are common. They are present to our souls; cunning, cruel, malignant; infusing their poison into our thoughts and affections; endeavoring to make us such as Magistus.

The worst evils here are moderated and repressed by the counteracting pressure of good spheres. To see evil in its true light, you must see it in the world of spirits and in hell—evil utterly divorced from good, projecting itself outwardly in its own brutal forms, and working out its frightful destiny.

I waited for my deliverance with a sublime hope, a calm and fixed faith. I knew it was coming. It came.

Magistus had at length reached, as all wicked men do either in this world or the next, the limit of his power, the fatal line; after which comes the rebound, the reaction, the punishment, the disgrace, the sure recoil upon one’s self of all the evil he meditates against others.

The men who beheld my ghastly features and emaciated form were loud in their curses of Magistus. I was laid on a bed in the house, and nurses were assigned me. The kindly centurion did not leave me until I was comfortably fixed and had recovered from my swoon.

“Pontius Pilate,” said he, “desired me to present you his congratulations, and to say that he will visit you to-morrow when you have been refreshed and strengthened by food and a night’s rest; and will then hear your story from your own lips.”

I thanked him warmly.

“And my deliverer?” said I, “my unseen, faithful friend and deliverer! Where is he? Who is he?”

No one present knew anything about my deliverer.

“Noble, courageous Anthony!” I exclaimed. “He shall have half of my possessions!” but I was disquieted by the darkening brow of Pilate.

“I asked him,” continued the Roman governor, “if he had been in your employ since our return from Rome.

“ ‘No!’ he replied, ‘I have seen him but once, and that was in prison.’ ”

“He spoke the truth,” said I; “he always spoke the truth!”

“I thought he was a messenger sent by some friend of yours. I remembered him immediately, and I remembered also my promise to Hortensius. I saw in him only an audacious criminal, returning without leave from an exile which had been decreed perpetual.”

“And you threw him into prison?”

“If I had known of his beautiful and heroic devotion to you, his fate would have been different.”

The evident remorse of Pilate startled me.

“And his fate? What was his fate? He is not dead,” said I, elevating my voice.

“He was beheaded immediately.”

“O cruel, cruel, cruel fate!” I exclaimed; and regardless of ceremony, I mourned for my dead friend with bitter tears and bitter words in the presence of his august murderer.

As soon as my Christian friends heard of my reappearance, they crowded to see me. From them I learned the sorrows and trials my sisters had undergone, as well as the strange events which preceded, accompanied and followed the crucifixion of Jesus.

Magistus and Caiaphas had set afloat the story that I was engaged in the raid upon the city of Jerusalem, made for the double purpose of robbery and murder, by Barabbas and his party; many of whom were deluded into the enterprise under the idea that it was a patriotic rebellion against the Roman yoke. They also suborned witnesses to prove that I was killed in the night attack, and was buried by them with a crowd of other rioters who fell by the Roman arms.

This led to the confiscation of our estates; and as Mary and Martha were helpless and beautiful young women without relatives to protect them, they were assigned to the special guardianship of Magistus. Caiaphas approved in strong terms this decree of the Sanhedrim, eulogized Magistus for his generous character and patriarchal virtues, and congratulated the sisters of a vile robber, themselves the disciples of a base impostor, on their extraordinary good fortune in being placed under the enviable protection of one of the shining lights of Israel.

My sisters, terrified at the thought of falling into the power of Magistus, their remembrance of whom was anything but pleasant, fled from our house and concealed themselves with some of the disciples of Jesus. The two chief miscreants of the Sanhedrim seemed determined to get possession of these unhappy and forlorn women; and they instituted the most rigorous search through the houses of all persons who were suspected of harboring them. Their evil passions seemed only half gratified by my destruction and the seizure of our property. Fearful would have been the fate of these angelic friends of Jesus, had they fallen at that time into the hands of his fiercest enemies.

After many sufferings and hair-breadth escapes, they were conveyed out of the country, and at that moment were living concealed in the city of Antioch, at the house of a poor but worthy man—himself a Christian, for Christ had cured him and nine others of the leprosy; and he alone of the ten had turned back to give thanks.

I wept when I thought of the unhappiness of my poor sisters; and I felt an urgent desire to regain my shattered strength and rejoin them.

The story of the crucifixion of the Lord struck me with wonder and awe. I was not surprised that Judas Iscariot had betrayed him. But the pathetic incidents of his last supper, his betrayal, his trial, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his appearance to his disciples, and his ascension, affected me to tears, and filled me with a spirit of humility, love and prayer.

“Those are pictures,” said I, to my friends, “which will be painted on the heart of the Christian Church in the colors of heaven, and which the powers of death and hell can never efface.

“If such,” thought I to myself—“if such is the effect of this divine history as it appears in the literal form to man, what must be the power and glory of the spiritual signification of these great and holy things, when they are studied by angels in the light of heaven!”

The mercy extended to Barabbas was not given to his followers; and two of them were selected to be crucified with Jesus, to increase the ignominy of his execution. And so Christ was crucified between two thieves—or men so reputed.

One of these was the Son of the Desert.

This brave, wild man, strangely compounded of good and evil, was heavily ironed and cast into the deepest dungeon. Magistus had a habit, consistent with his cruel disposition, of visiting prisoners condemned to death, and enjoying the terrors with which they contemplated their approaching fate.

The Son of the Desert did not gratify his passion for witnessing the sufferings of abject misery. He was singularly cheerful and buoyant. He declared himself not only willing but anxious to die. He had nothing to contemplate with pleasure when he looked back; and as to the future, if the soul were really immortal and a second life were given him, he was determined to start upon it with new principles and motives.

Magistus was astonished at the calm, philosophic spirit of this poor wretch, who had never heard of philosophy.

When Magistus was leaving, the Son of the Desert took a ring from his finger and said:

“You are not too proud to do one little favor for a condemned criminal. Give this ring to Martha, the sister of Lazarus. Tell her it has accomplished the mission upon which she sent it. She can touch it without shame. It has been an angel of light to me. Since I have worn it, I have seized no man’s goods, I have taken no man’s life except in lawful battle. If I have adhered to my band, it was to moderate their passions, to stay the hand of violence, to plead for mercy, to assist the captive, and where possible to make restitution. It found me a slave, it has made me a freeman. It found me a robber, it has made me a patriot.”

He was about to say more, but suddenly checking some rising emotion, he clenched one hand upon his heart, and waving the other, exclaimed:

“Adieu! adieu!”

Magistus was astounded, and perhaps pained, on finding that his own child had been crucified with Jesus. It was too late to do aught but bury the whole matter with the other painful things in his memory. He said nothing to Ulema on the subject, who was of course unconscious of it all in her waking state.

A strange thing, however, now took place. The moment she passed into her trance state, she began to weep and wail over her lost child. Her clairvoyance put her in full possession of all the facts of his life and death. The mother’s heart broke under the immense sorrow. She pined rapidly, and her white hands were soon folded in that sweet sleep which precedes the celestial waking.

We have a life within our life, like a wheel within a wheel!

With no knowledge of his parentage, no friend in whom to confide, no heart to receive and give a last adieu, the Son of the Desert bore his own cross up Calvary, and was nailed upon it by the Roman soldiers.

But the conduct and words of Jesus smote him to the heart. Through that secret affiliation and sympathy by which one brave and good man recognizes another in the hour of sternest trial, the Son of the Desert, educated only in heart, perceived with the heart that the kingdom of Christ was a spiritual kingdom. Divining intuitively the mission of infinite love in which the Lord was engaged, he confesses his own sin, rebukes and silences his fellow-sinner, and pleads for remembrance in the hour of triumph which he sees is approaching for the King of kings.

Brave, repentant soul! Jesus is everywhere; in heaven; in earth; in hell. And shortly thou wast with Him and He with thee, in that paradise or garden of the soul, in which the new life, forgetful of the old, begins to bud and blossom!

The great tragedy was enacted. The disciples at first stood afar off. But as the death-scenes drew nearer, and the curiosity of the crowd increased, military discipline was somewhat relaxed, and the people were permitted to press closer, and those who had special claims were allowed to come up and stand very near the dying sufferers. It was thus that the Apostle John, and Mary the mother of the Lord, were in speaking distance in his last moments. It was then that He gave each of them so tenderly to the other.

Far off in the crowd was a solitary being whose eyes were fixed continually on the Son of the Desert. He stood with his brawny arms folded spasmodically across his chest. Great tears ran slowly down his cheeks. That man was poor and ignorant and ragged and black, but he had a noble soul. It was Anthony, the Ethiopian, who, exiled by Pilate into the desert, had there met Barabbas and his band. He soon attached himself by a certain instinct to the only noble spirit in the party. He followed the fortunes of this man; and, true to his African genius, he imitated his character. The Son of the Desert was not ashamed of his humble disciple.

Anthony escaped death and capture on the terrible night of the riot. But his master was taken; and the faithful servant prowled about the suburbs and the prisons, risking detection and arrest in order to catch a glimpse, if possible, of him whom his soul loved. It was all in vain. He followed the vast crowd which went out to the crucifixion, pushed aside by the spears of the soldiers, and found himself on Calvary a witness of the last act in the great drama—an act which disclosed the mighty power of Love, and foreshadowed and meant the redemption of the world.

He procured a large goat-skin bottle full of water, and stood at the cross bathing his master’s wounded feet with the cooling stream. The guards wearied, sickened with the prolonged sufferings of the victims, did not prevent him. He listened to the conversation between Christ and the repentant sinner; and for the first time he seemed aware that there was another great tragedy going on besides the one in which he was especially interested.

He sat or squatted upon the ground in front of these dying men, looking first at one and then at the other; studying also the faces of the group of holy women, who with the good John stood near the central cross. A great idea was dawning on the benighted soul of the Ethiopian, a great light, a great glory.

Why is it that the beams of celestial light pass by the palace and illumine the hut?—pass by the cultivated and learned and gladden the hearts of the simple and child-like?

When washing the body for this lowly burial, they discovered some beautiful red letters pricked or burned into the skin immediately over the heart. They were these:

“Martha, sister of Lazarus.”

Anthony followed John to his home and became his servant. He soon learned the anxieties and conjectures which prevailed about my sudden disappearance. Remembering my face at the prison window, he became convinced that I was still a prisoner. He determined, with John’s approval, to devote himself to finding and delivering me. He had no adviser, for John was busy in saving my sisters from the cruel Magistus, and was at Ephesus when I was delivered from the dungeon.

How well he executed his trust, the reader already knows. But how he did it; how he discovered my whereabouts; how he got into Magistus’ employ; how he obtained the post whence he could aid me; his difficulties, his hopes, his fears, his emotions—all were buried with him—alas!

He will tell the whole story to me when I meet him in heaven, as I most assuredly shall.

Poor Anthony! brave to impetuosity, extravagantly generous, meek to the deepest humility, faithful to the last degree! In his short, obscure life is concentrated a glory superior to all Greek or Roman fame.

One more piece of news occasioned me as much surprise as anything already narrated. This, however, unlike the rest, was joyful. About a week before my deliverance, my good uncle Beltrezzor had arrived in Jerusalem from Persia. He had heard, through his correspondent in the Holy City, of my supposed death, of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the mysterious disappearance of my sisters. He at once suspected some evil, and determined to hasten to their assistance. He found considerable difficulty in converting all his property into jewels and precious stones; and still more in bringing everything safely through countries which were at war and infested by prowling bands of deserters and thieves.

He had started for Antioch only the day before, having heard that John had conducted my sisters safely to that city.

Pilate was not slow in bringing Magistus to justice. Finding that an exposure of his infamously cruel character was already made, and that the Roman governor himself had taken part against him, hundreds of people whom he had injured in person or property came forward to assist in the prosecution. He was convicted of many crimes, his estates confiscated; he was exiled the country and forbidden to return under penalty of death.

It was ten days before I was able to travel. I chid the tardy hours that kept me from my beloved sisters and my dear old uncle, the disciple of Zoroaster.

At last the word came:

“To Antioch!”

He was greatly changed. The inspiration of evil had taken demoniac possession of him. He had grown leaner and darker. His eye, always eloquent and powerful, was fierce and restless. He had a singular habit of grasping at his breast, with an expression of suffering on his face, as if a violent pain shot through his heart. He had lost much of that calm, self-possessed, imposing exterior which commanded respect by its apparent strength and dignity. He was louder in his speech, more rapid in his gestures, prouder and more defiant in his attitude. This gained him a larger but more vulgar audience.

The magician was on the eve of madness, if not actually mad.

It was the age of insanity. It was the age of imposture and false miracles, of convulsion and persecution, of moral and physical turpitude, of direful cruelty and bloodshed, of the wildest fanaticism, of the most revolting excesses, of actual possession by devils. Nothing like it was ever seen before or ever will be again, because all these things were the effects and collateral issues of the spiritual combat between good and evil, between Christ and hell; the throes of the great demons of past ages before their final expulsion from their thrones and the inauguration of a new spiritual power in the world.

On his first arrival he had directed his subtle energies to obtain the ear and the faith of the ruler of the province, the Roman governor, whose name was Lelius. The appliances which he brought to bear upon the heart, the brain, the senses of this weak and vain man, were finally successful. In a few weeks Lelius was not only the dupe, but the mere creature of Simon Magus. Helena shared with her pretended husband the glory and the shame of this royal conquest.

Such was the state of things when the apostle John arrived at Antioch with the two unhappy fugitives—my sisters. They were attended by Mary Magdalen in the humble capacity of servant. This zealous disciple of Christ had kept modestly aloof from them in their prosperity; but when thrown together by common sorrows and persecutions, she tendered her services and proved through life a most faithful and efficient friend.

Emboldened by their long repose, Mary and Martha closely veiled took a walk one afternoon with Salothel through the grand street of colonnades, and sat down to rest in one of the beautiful public squares. A triumphant procession in honor of the Roman arms was passing by; and it was precisely in a great crowd, passing and repassing, that our recluses thought there was least danger of being specially observed.

Suddenly two men stopped near them, and one gazed earnestly at the sisters. That man was Simon Magus, thoroughly-disguised. He had received letters from his old disciple Magistus, telling him how his nieces had eluded his vigilant pursuit, and requesting him to keep a lookout for them. Simon also had not forgotten the defeat of his great scheme at Bethany, and he desired above all things to get possession of Mary for his own private ends.

What to do with her? was now the question.

Simon Magus had such intense faith in the incantations of Ja-bol-he-moth, the old demon of the Lybian desert, that he was ready to abandon his great theological mission and convey Mary to the ruins of the ancient city which was buried in the sand. If he had permitted Helena to remain in possession of his palace under the protection of Lelius, that beautiful person would have approved his enterprise, and would have given him her blessing with her farewell. But Simon was obstinately resolved that she should accompany him, and share the dangers and the glory of the expedition.

Helena positively refused to return to Egypt; and as she was as fierce and implacable as she was beautiful, Simon was at last obliged to submit to a compromise. Mary was not to be conveyed into Africa; but she was to be murdered, her heart extracted, burned into a cinder and pulverized, to constitute a magical powder of extraordinary virtues. Thus Simon was to be gratified by an addition to his necromantic treasures, and Helena was to enjoy the dissipation of Antioch.

“And how it will delight our friend Magistus!” said Helena.

Simon and Helena devised a cunning plan by which they could attain their ends without the least danger to themselves. Simon represented to Lelius that a strange and dangerous conspiracy against government and religion was taking root in Antioch. He described Jesus as a subtle impostor, who, under the cloak of extraordinary sanctity, meditated the grandest political revolutions. He painted the disciples in the blackest colors as the secret enemies of peace and order.

“The leader,” said he, “of these turbulent spirits was crucified by Pontius Pilate, whose probity and leniency are known to the whole world. His followers, driven from Jerusalem, have spread as firebrands in different countries; and secretly associated together, they are now plotting against the stability of all existing civil and religious institutions.”

He claimed to have discovered their plots by magical power; and he solemnly assured his credulous listener that he had not exaggerated their importance or danger. He predicted that in a few years a decree of extermination would be issued by all civilized powers against these people, and he begged Lelius to initiate those measures of destruction which would entitle him to the gratitude of mankind.

Lelius assented to this proposition, and Mary was led or rather dragged into the august presence of the Roman governor. Simon Magus proceeded to question her in the most adroit manner, drawing from her exactly such answers as were best calculated to shock and disgust the ignorant and arrogant pagan who held in his single hand the power of life and death.

Mary, terrified and unsuspecting, answered all his queries in a simple and truthful manner. She was thus made to say, that she had known and loved Jesus of Nazareth; that she had anointed him on the eve of his royal entry into Jerusalem; that she believed his teachings; that he had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven; that she prayed to him as God; that he was coming again to restore Israel and to judge the world.

This seemed like the wildest folly and fanaticism to the proud Roman; and he smiled at the thought that there were people with the semblance of rationality who could credit such absurdities. But Simon’s work was only half done. Questioning and cross-questioning his artless victim, he drew from her facts of a far more serious and practical bearing.

In addition she was made to say—never dreaming to what conclusions her admissions were leading her pagan judge—that Jesus had set apart a great many persons, twelve at one time and seventy at another, to go forth into the world and preach this gospel; that he had given them miraculous power wherewith to achieve their ends; that angels delivered them from prisons; that they could strike their enemies blind or dumb or powerless; that they could raise the dead; that they had a secret organization with signs and symbols; that they had started or were going to start on their grand mission which was to overturn the powers of pagan darkness and prepare the minds of men for the universal reign of Christ at his second coming.

When Mary was removed by the guards, Simon had no difficulty in convincing Lelius that his own allegations had been well founded. Torturing the meaning of Mary’s words and giving them a purely literal construction, he inflamed the indignation and zeal of Lelius to such a pitch, that he despatched private letters to the governors of the neighboring provinces, informing them of the existence, motives and plans of this new and desperate conspiracy against all that was stable, glorious and venerable in the civilizations of Greece and Rome.

The next thing was to determine what should be done to extinguish a heresy which meant revolution, in his own province. To this conference Helena was admitted; for Aspasia had less influence over Pericles than Helena over Lelius. The Roman governor was weak-minded, easily led, and without moral sensibility. He was passionately fond of new sensations, extraordinary excitements, and the bloody sports of the amphitheatre. He was soon induced to sanction a magnificent scheme concocted by that subtle brain which received its inspiration from the old magician of Pharaoh.

Our good uncle Beltrezzor arrived at Antioch the day after Mary’s disappearance. He found the household of Salothel in the profoundest consternation and distress. He was welcomed with frantic joy, and joined them in the most painful and laborious search for his lost niece. Day after day these sad, anxious souls traversed the city, walking, looking, inquiring everywhere. Among half a million or more of people the lost are not easily found, especially if cunning and unscrupulous power gets them in its clutches and conceals them from view.

In the course of his inquiries, Beltrezzor discovered that Simon Magus lived in the city in great grandeur and authority. A fearful suspicion entered his mind; for he remembered the night-scene in Bethany, and the foiled abduction. He did not communicate his fears to Martha or the rest, but insisted upon their remaining in the utmost seclusion, while he conducted the search alone. He said he had discovered something important, but which demanded great caution and secresy; and he endeavored to inspire a hope which he did not feel.

The next day, passing a crowd in one of the squares, he observed the herald of Lelius reading a proclamation to the people, which excited the greatest enthusiasm. He came near and listened to its second reading.

It announced officially, with great pomp of words, that the government, determined to protect the safety and morals of the people, had taken measures to extirpate a certain secret association of conspirators, which had been founded in Judea by one Jesus Christ, whom Pontius Pilate had crucified as an impostor and revolutionist. That the first step in this righteous undertaking, would be the public execution of a young woman, who was an agent and emissary of these outlaws, and who had anointed the said Jesus king of the Jews, according to the old Jewish custom of installing into the royal office. That in order to strike terror into these evil-doers, and to warn them of the fate which awaited them if they attempted to teach the doctrines of Jesus, the young woman, Mary of Bethany, high-priestess of this new and dangerous religion, would be thrown to an immense Næmean lion just arrived from Africa, in the grand amphitheatre on the afternoon of a certain day which would be the second Sabbath following, according to the Jewish calendar. That, to illustrate the clemency of the government, a full pardon would be given to the said Mary if she publicly recanted her heresies and revealed the names of the other conspirators.

The whole city was in a blaze of excitement over this new sensation. It was the great topic of conversation everywhere.

All agreed that she deserved her fate; and that it would be the most entertaining sight of the season, and a death-blow to the conspiracy.

“And see!” said they, “the noble mercy of Lelius! If she recants at any time before the opening of the amphitheatre, she will be released.”

Then they all agreed that it would be very cowardly and disgusting in her to recant. They admired an unbending and not a repentant sinner.

Beltrezzor was a plain, childlike man, having no ingenuity for indirect attacks, or for unraveling difficult questions. Thoroughly truthful and honest, he always went to work in an open, straightforward way. He felt that, in the great work before him, he had but one hope, one resource—his immense wealth.

If he had loved money more than he did, his hope would have been greater; for he would have believed that all men could be bought with a bribe. Unpurchasable himself, he doubted the power of money. Still he was compelled to test its efficacy, for it was plainly his only resource.

He thought it best to keep away from these high dignitaries altogether, and to sound the subordinates. He was afraid, moreover, that if Simon learned of a wealthy element working in Mary’s behalf, he would increase his vigilance and double his guards, so that bribery and escape would be alike impossible. It was best to let him believe that Mary was alone, helpless and friendless.

Beltrezzor went straight to the point. He asked him no questions. He said softly:

“A word to you in a private room may be valuable.”

Euphorbus looked fixedly at him a moment, and led the way to a small office within. Beltrezzor produced a sparkling gem of considerable value.

“I wish to speak with the young woman who is confined in the amphitheatre.”

“Impossible!” said the keeper, gruffly.

“I am her uncle.”

“No admittance to anyone on pain of death,” said the Gaul, casting a wistful eye on the jewel.

Beltrezzor drew forth a precious stone of remarkable size and immense value.

“These are yours, my friend, for a single brief interview with my niece.”

“Hark you!” said Euphorbus, taking the jewels into his hand. “I am willing to gratify and befriend you; but there are four Roman soldiers at the door of her cell, who permit no one but myself to go in or out.”

“Are they not under your command?”

“No. They belong to Simon Magus, and obey only his word.”

“Lead me to them.”

The old man made a touching appeal to these rough men for permission to see his niece. Some large gold coins that he offered them had more influence than his eloquence. The assurance of the keeper that he would shield them as far as possible, decided the matter; and Beltrezzor was admitted into Mary’s dungeon.

The meeting between uncle and niece was affecting in the extreme. Mary had greatly changed since her imprisonment. A deadly pallor pervaded her beautiful countenance, and she had the air of one whose delicate nerves had almost given way under prolonged terrors. The old man clasped her in his arms, and the bitter tears fell from his face upon her golden hair.

She trembled; her eyeballs started with horror; the cold drops stood on her forehead; she clung frantically to her uncle.

“Oh! I have thought of it,” she said, “until I shall go mad! And then to hear the lion roaring at night! It is fearful. He is kept very, very near me. Is not that cruel, cruel? I hear every sound he makes. I hear him growling and crunching when they feed him. I hear him yawning and whining as he impatiently paces his cage. Then at night he roars as if he thought he was in the pathless forest. Oh it freezes me! I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I shall die!”

The head of the young woman fell upon the old man’s breast.

“Have you never thought, my child,” he said, tremulously, “of saving your life by renouncing your religion?”

“No, uncle! never! never!”

“That’s a brave girl!” said he, tenderly kissing her forehead; “and you shall be saved without it.”

“I am not afraid of death, uncle, but of the lion. But I doubt not—oh! I doubt not that Jesus will support me even in that last extremity. I cannot, however, control my fears.”

The old man cheered her with many tender words and promises of help and assurances of speedy rescue. Promising to visit her twice every day, he departed to mature some plan for her deliverance.

During the night Martha heard groans issuing from his chamber. She lit her lamp and entered softly. Beltrezzor, pale and haggard, lay upon his back with his face upturned to heaven. He had been weeping in his sleep. His lips were moving as if in prayer.

Faithful, loving old man!