“But, Sebastian, you have not fulfilled your promise,--your double promise to me,--to tell me the secrets you concealed from me. This is your last opportunity; so, come, let me know all.” “Do you remember well what the secrets were?” “Right well, indeed, for they have much perplexed me. First on that night of the meeting in your apartments, you said there was one motive strong enough to check your ardent desire to die for Christ; and lately you refused to give me your reason for despatching me hastily to Campania, and joined this secret to the other: how, I cannot conceive.” “Yet they form but one. I had promised to watch over your true welfare, Pancratius: it was a duty of friendship and love that I had assumed. I saw your eagerness after martyrdom; I knew the ardent temperament of your youthful heart; I dreaded lest you should commit yourself by some over-daring action which might tarnish, even as lightly as a breath does finely-tempered steel, the purity of your desire, or tip with a passing blight one single leaf of your palm. I determined, therefore, to restrain my own earnest longings, till I had seen you safe through danger. Was this right?” “Oh, it was too kind of you, dear Sebastian; it was nobly kind. But how is this connected with my journey?” “If I had not sent you away, you would have been seized for your boldly tearing down the edict, or your rebuke of the judge in his court. You would have been certainly condemned, and [Illustration: Each one, approaching devoutly, and with tears of gratitude, received from his consecrated hand his share,--that is, the whole of the mystical food.] would have suffered for Christ; but your sentence would have proclaimed a different, and a civil, offence; that of rebellion against the emperors. And moreover, my dear boy, you would have been singled out for a triumph. You would have been pointed at by the very heathens with honor, as a gallant and daring youth; you might have been disturbed, even in your conflict, by a transient cloud of pride; at any rate, you would have been spared that ignominy which forms the distinctive merit and the special glory of dying for simply being a Christian.” “Quite true, Sebastian,” said Pancratius with a blush. “But when I saw you,” continued the soldier, “taken in the performance of a generous act of charity towards the confessors of Christ; when I saw you dragged through the streets, chained to a galley-slave, as a common culprit; when I saw you pelted and hooted, like other believers; when I heard sentence pronounced on you in common with the rest, because you are a Christian, and for nothing else, I felt that my task was ended; I would not have raised a finger to save you.”