“Whom should she spite? whom contradict?” cried Agellius, thrown for the moment off his balance. “O Callista! Callista in prison for Christianity! Oh if it’s true that she is a Christian! but what if she is not?” he added with great terror, “what if she’s not, and yet in prison, as if she were? How are we to get her out, uncle? Impossible! no, she’s not a Christian—she is not at all. She ought not to be there! Yet how wonderful!”

“Well, I am sure of it, too,” said Jucundus; “I’d stake the best image in my shop that she’s not a Christian; but what if she is perverse enough to say she is? and such things are not uncommon. Then, I say, what in the world is to be done? If she says she is, why she is. There you are; and what can you do?”

“You don’t mean to say,” exclaimed Agellius, “that that sweet delicate child is in that horrible hole; impossible!” and he nearly shrieked at the thought. “What is the meaning of it all? dear, dear uncle, do tell me something more about it. Why did you not tell me before? What can be done?”

Jucundus thought he now had him in his hand. “Why, it’s plain,” he answered, “what can be done. She’s no Christian, we both agree. It’s certain, too, that she chooses to say she is, or something like it. There’s just one person who has influence with her, to make her tell the truth.”

“Ha!” cried Agellius, starting as if an asp had bitten him.

Jucundus kept silence, and let the poison of the said asp work awhile in his nephew’s blood.

Agellius put his hands before his eyes; and with his elbows on his knees, began moving to and fro, as if in intense pain.

“I repeat what I have said,” Jucundus observed at length; “I do really think that she imagines a certain young gentleman is likely to be in trouble, and that she is determined to share the trouble with him.”

“But it isn’t true,” cried Agellius with great vehemence; “it’s not true…. If she really is not a Christian, O my dear Lord, surely they won’t put her to death as if she was?”

“But if she has made up her mind to be in the same boat with you, and will be a Christian while you are a Christian, what on earth can we do, Agellius?” asked Jucundus. “You have the whole matter in a nutshell.”