Old Dromo, the vineyard-keeper, was very reticent, for he did not wish to endanger any of those who had taken part in the youth’s deliverance. But the quick intelligence of Onesimus, working upon broken hints conjectured that Nereus and Junia, as members of his old _familia_, must have had some share in saving his life. Pudens, when he visited his vineyard to receive his accounts, came and saw him, and spoke a few kindly words; but the youth could see that the centurion had lost his old regard for him. He saw no one else, except occasionally one of the peasant neighbours. Junia, of course, came not. Such a visit would have been impossible to her maiden modesty. What could she do but silently combat a love which she felt to be hopeless? How could she ever marry a gladiator with such a past, and with so hopeless a probable future--a renegade, to all appearance, from the faith of Christ? She could but pray for him, and then strive to prevent her thoughts from turning to him any more. And Nereus came not to see him. He distrusted him, as he thought of all the crimes through which he must have fallen, from the position of a Christian brother, into such a sink of degradation as a gladiators’ school. Lonely, disgraced, abandoned, in deadly peril of his life from a hundred sources if once he should be recognised, prostrated by weakness, often suffering torments from the pain of wounds which as yet were but half healed, Onesimus sank deeper and deeper into despair. Repentance and the love of God may often grow in the midst of adversity, like some Alpine gentian amid the snows; but sometimes there is a deadliness in the chill of hopeless misfortune which kills every green leaf of faith. The youth, smitten by so many calamities, began to feel as though the river of his life, which might have been so full and rejoicing, had lost itself in mud and sand. His sun had gone down while it yet was day. What was he to do? How could he live? Why had they saved him? If Nereus and Junia and Pudens had done it, by what means he knew not, it was a cruel kindness. Why should they have preserved him to a destiny so miserable? Junia must despise him now: why should she have wished that his life should be spared? He murmured against God in his heart. He cursed the day of his birth. He had had many chances and recklessly flung away one after another. Sometimes he thought of Christ and of all that he had heard from the lips of Paul in Ephesus about the Friend of publicans and sinners. But had he not denied the faith? Had he not lived like an apostate? If Christ could still love him, why was he left in all this misery and hopelessness? Why did no ray of light gleam through his darkened sky?