“Do not kneel,” said the priest; “they will see you. Stop, I have got to tell you how and where to find me.” He then proceeded to give him the necessary instructions. “Walk out,” he said, “along the road to Thibursicumbur to the third milestone, you will come to a country road; pursue it; walk a thousand steps; then again for the space of seven paternosters; and then speak to the man upon your right hand. And now away with you, God speed you, we shall not long be parted,” and he made the sign of the cross over him.

“That old chap gives himself airs,” said the boy, when Agellius joined him; “what may he be? one of your slaves, Agellius?”

“You’re a pert boy,” answered he, “for asking me the question.”

“They say the Christians brought the locusts,” said Firmian, “by their enchantments; and there’s a jolly row beginning in the Forum just now. The report goes that you are a Christian.”

“That’s because your people have nothing better to do than talk against their neighbours.”

“Because you are so soft, rather,” said the boy. “Another man would have knocked me down for saying it; but you are lackadaisical folk, who bear insults tamely. Arnobius says your father was a Christian.”

“Father and son are not always the same religion now-a-days,” said Agellius.

“Ay, ay,” answered Firmian, “but the Christians came from Egypt: and as cook there is the son of cook, and soldier is son of soldier, so Christian, take my word for it, is the son of a Christian.”

“Christians boast, I believe,” answered Agellius, “that they are of no one race or country, but are members of a large unpatriotic family, whose home is in the sky.”

“Christians,” answered the boy, “would never have framed the great Roman empire; that was the work of heroes. Great Cæsar, Marius, Marcus Brutus, Camillus, Cicero, Sylla, Lucullus, Scipio, could never have been Christians. Arnobius says they are a skulking set of fellows.”

“I suppose you wish to be a hero,” said Agellius.

“I am to be a pleader,” answered Firmian; “I should like to be a great orator like Cicero, and every one listening to me.”

They were walking along the top of a mud wall, which separated Varius’s farm from his neighbour’s, when suddenly Firmian, who led the way, leapt down into a copse, which reached as far as the ravine in which the knoll terminated towards Sicca. The boy still went forward by devious paths, till they had mounted as high as the city wall.

“You are bringing me where there is no entrance,” said Agellius.

The boy laughed. “Jucundus told me to bring you by a blind way,” he said. “You know best why. This is one of our ways in and out.”