Hitherto a very little had sufficed him, but now he began to need money--money for gambling, money for the taverns, money to spend in the same sins and follies in which the slaves about him spent their days. He could indeed have gained it, had he sunk so low, in a thousand nefarious ways; and, gifted as he was with a quick and supple intelligence, as well as with no small share of the beauty of his race, he might have run away once more, or have secured his purchase into many a pagan household, where he might have become the pampered favourite of some luxurious master. Such, in such a city as Rome, would have been the certain fate of any youth like him, had it not been for the truths which he had heard from Epaphras in the house of Philemon. When he was most willing to forget those holy lessons they still hung about him and gave him checks. The grace of God still lived as a faint spark, not wholly quenched, under the whitening embers of his life. He could not forget that what were now his pleasures had once been pains, and sometimes amid the stifling atmosphere of a dissipation which rapidly tended to become pleasureless, his soul seemed to ‘gasp among the shallows,’ sore athirst for purer air. But he resisted these retarding influences, and by fiercer draughts of excitement strove to dispel the pleadings of the still small voice. It was not long before he felt hard pressed, for he had gambled away the little he had earned. He had stolen before--he would steal again. The slaves of Pudens were mostly of a simpler and more faithful class than those of the more luxurious houses. There was no need for Pudens to take great precautions about the safety of his money. Most of it was safe in the hands of his banker (_mensarius_), but sums which to a slave would seem considerable were locked up in a chest under the charge of Nereus. Nereus, as we have already mentioned, was a Christian, and Onesimus, until he had begun to degenerate, had felt warmly drawn towards his daughter Junia. He thought, too, that the simple maiden was not wholly indifferent to him. But Nereus had watched his career, and as it became too probable that the Phrygian would sink into worthlessness, he had taken care that Onesimus and his daughter should scarcely ever meet.