"Because I reached thee just in time--when thy strength was nearly exhausted, and thy blood almost frozen by repeated plunges in the cold canal; and when thy arm, already benumbed, had let go its last stay, and thou wast falling backwards for the last time into the water. I saw thee--I knew thee, as I took hold of thee, insensible. I had in my grasp the murderer of one most dear to me. Divine justice seemed to have overtaken him; there was only my will between him and his doom. It was my day of vengeance, and I fully gratified it." "Ha! and how, pray?" "By drawing thee out, and laying thee on the bank, and chafing thee till thy heart resumed its functions; and then consigning thee to thy servants, rescued from death." "Thou liest!" screamed Corvinus; "my servants told me that _they_ drew me out." "And did they give thee my knife, together with thy leopard-skin purse, which I found on the ground, after I had dragged thee forth?" "No; they said the purse was lost in the canal. It _was_ a leopard-skin purse, the gift of an African sorceress. What sayest thou of the knife?" "That it is here, see it, still rusty with the water; thy purse I gave to thy slaves; my own knife I retained for myself; look at it again. Dost thou believe me now? Have I been always a viper on thy path?" Too ungenerous to acknowledge that he had been conquered in the struggle between them, Corvinus only felt himself withered, degraded, before his late school fellow, crumbled like a clot of dust in his hands. His very heart seemed to him to blush. He felt sick, and staggered, hung down his head, and sneaked away. He cursed the games, the emperor, the yelling rabble, the roaring beasts, his horses and chariot, his slaves, his father, himself--but he could not, for his life, curse Pancratius. He had reached the door, when the youth called him back. He turned and looked at him with a glance of respect, almost approaching to love. Pancratius put his hand on his arm, and said, "Corvinus, I have freely forgiven thee. There is One above, who cannot forgive without repentance. Seek pardon from Him." Corvinus slunk away, and appeared no more that day. He lost the sight on which his coarse imagination had gloated for days, which he had longed for during months.