One day, exhausted by his own ravings, Adonijah threw himself down by a fountain in the garden, and a kind of stupor more resembling death than sleep came over him, when by accident the infant Lucius perceived him, and, springing from his nurse, ran up to his unfortunate friend, flung his arms about his neck, and covered his face and hands with kisses, calling him by all those endearing epithets infancy lavishes upon the objects of its love. Those sweet silvery accents awoke an answering chord in the breast of Adonijah. He pressed the boy to his sad bosom again and again, returned his caresses with passionate fondness, and bathed him with his burning tears. These tears were the first he had shed since he had learned the fate of his country. Sanity returned. Memory resumed her powers, and, though no beacon of hope arose to cheer the dismal future or illumine the dim darkness that overshadowed Israel, he looked upon the innocent creature before him, and felt that the love of Lucius to him was like the fountain in the desert to the fainting traveller. From that day neither the father of the young Lucius nor his numerous attendants could prevent his becoming the companion of the Hebrew slave. Any attempt to debar him from the society of his dear preceptor occasioned such gusts of passion on the part of the child, followed by sickness and languor, that Julius was forced to acquiesce, lest he should lose the sole scion of his noble house. How fond, how proud, looked the boy while leading his melancholy friend from place to place, guided by the dictates of his own playful caprice, now sitting on Adonijah’s knee, twisting his ivory fingers in his jetty ringlets, or flinging his own golden curls against them, and then laughing at the contrast they presented as mirrored in the fountain at their feet. When the dark mood stole over the senses of Adonijah, when the spirit of melancholy madness threatened to return, the sweet face of his young guardian would reflect his sadness, and he would repeat after Adonijah those wailing Hebrew strains that fell ever and anon from his lips. The sound of his own sacred language would recall Adonijah to himself; he would wipe away the tears from the fair face of the child, while a torrent of grief and tenderness flowed from his eyes; those waters of affliction would ease the burning throbbing of his brain, and the mental delusion for a season would pass away. These fits of delirium became less frequent, and the attenuated form of Adonijah gradually became rounded with health; he resumed his instructions to Lucius, and his pen was again employed in his master’s service. Still he perceived a marked change in Julius’ manner towards him,—a failing of that respect he had hitherto received from his household. He imputed it to the fallen state of his people; but his late aberration was, in fact, the only cause.