That was all of it--quiet, simple, truthful; based upon the very highest mutual love, respect, and trust; but no grand ceremonial that human pride ever imagined, or human lips pronounced, could have any more thoroughly bound and consecrated them unto each other for life and death than did that simple, heart-felt covenant. For in those days, and in the Christian communities, marriage was not of compulsion, or of trade, convenience, ambition, but of free, intelligent choice; and among those people the equally shameful blasphemies of adultery and divorce were utterly unknown. So, upon the next morning, after a tender leave-taking all around, in which even old Thopt commended him to the guardianship of God, Arius, accompanied by his father, loaded his boxes into their little boat, and they made their way unto Apollonia, at which port they took shipping for Alexandria, whence immediately they went in another ship unto the sea-port for Antioch, and thence to the ancient city wherein they "were first called Christians." Ammonius recalled to the mind of the Bishop Lucanius the fearful storm in which they two had met more than twenty years before, which interview had been the medium of the Lord’s mercy unto him; and was most gladly and affectionately welcomed. Ammonius informed the bishop that, having been precluded from the public ministrations of the word by his own physical infirmities, he had made a vow to dedicate the first son that might be born unto him to the service of God, and had, therefore, brought unto him his only child, a lad not altogether ignorant of the gospel nor of letters, whose heart was set upon doing the Lord’s work, to profit by his experience and instructions. And the lad pleased the bishop greatly; and, after some conversation, Arius was admitted into the school, or class of young men whom the bishop taught, as a deacon in the church immediately under the charge of Lucanius; for the bishops of those days were not lords or princes, but were presbyters, who had their own congregations, and who, from zeal and learning, age and experience, were intrusted also with an advisory superintendence of some other presbyters and churches, and especially with the training of young deacons for the ministry. And the next day Ammonius resumed his homeward journey, and in due time reached Baucalis without accident or delay.