Whether they were asked about plans for a matrimonial alliance, or the heirdom to an estate, or anything else, this oracle admitted of any interpretation they chose to put upon it. Altogether sickened with his companions and with their way of living, Onesimus was further troubled by the insight into every hidden wound and portent of pagan wickedness which came to his ears, or which he witnessed in these country wanderings. Long afterwards, when he was an old man in Ephesus, he used to tell these stories to his friends, to urge them to yet more zealous effort for the healing of that heathen wickedness of which the whole head was sick and the whole heart faint. On one occasion, for instance, in his wanderings, the Galli had been unable to collect an audience, because the entire population of the little town of Varia was absorbed in the interest of a trial which affected the family of one of their prominent residents. A wealthy burgher had been left a widower with an only son, a boy of modest character, and devoted to his studies. Some years afterwards he married again, and another son was born to him. By the time this second boy was twelve years old his half-brother had grown into manhood, and his step-mother, who hated him for his virtues, determined to poison him. Summoning a slave who was in her confidence, she sent him to a physician to purchase poison, which she mixed in a cup of wine and placed ready for the youth at the next meal. It happened, however, that her own boy, returning hot and thirsty from school, saw the wine on the table and drank it. He had scarcely finished the draught, when he fell to the ground as dead. The slave who attended him filled the air with his clamour, and when the inmates of the house came flocking in, one accused another of the crime. The master of the house was out, and his wife sent to inform him that her boy had been poisoned, that her step-son was the murderer. The husband was crushed to the earth by the double calamity. His boy was dead; the elder son, of whom he had been so proud, was to be tried for murder. Scarcely were the boy’s obsequies finished when the hapless father, his grey hairs defiled with dust, hastened to the Forum, and there embraced the knees of the magistrates, and besought them to avenge him on the fratricide. The local Senate was assembled, and the herald summoned the accuser. Onesimus, who had nothing to do that day, was present at the trial. He heard the old man plead pathetically against the son who had been the pride of his life and home; he heard the youth, with all the calm of innocence, deny the charge. There was no evidence against him but the word of his step-mother and her confidential slave. This man stood up with a front of brass, and declared that the youth had been actuated by jealousy of his brother, and had poisoned him. There was nothing to rebut this evidence, and every jury-man was prepared to drop into the brazen urn the fatal ticket marked with the letter C,