‘Thanks!’ answered Fabricius, taking the cup with an unsteady hand. ‘Fill yourself also a draught,’ which invitation Cestus obeyed, nothing loth. ‘Here’s to the speedy restoration of your little maid,’ he said, and bottomed the cup. ‘Now, as you are satisfied that these trifles are really genuine, and that I am not deceiving you, I must ask you to write me that little document; after which, you shall know the whole story, which will contain certain items which will astonish you without doubt.’ Fabricius reached his writing materials and wrote, slowly and painfully, a brief undertaking, by which the personal safety of Cestus would be assured, and his efforts suitably rewarded, upon the satisfactory restoration of his grandchild. Cestus perused the document, and, finding it satisfactory, put it away carefully in his breast. ‘Thanks! thanks! I value, and rely upon your word equally; but then I may fall into other hands, in which case this paper might be useful. I will commence and tell you from the beginning, and you may brace yourself up to hear something which will startle you.’ He poured out and drank some more wine, and then began his declaration. ‘Your little maid was stolen from your own porch, here on the Janiculum, fifteen years ago, all but three months and three days—if you have the day marked, consult it, and you will find I am right.’ Giving a start of surprise, Fabricius began to count with the fingers of one hand on the table, to assist a mental calculation. ‘You are right, without doubt,’ he said finally; ‘how come you to know this?’ ‘None so well as I,’ returned the other, ‘you shall learn.’ He then related the manner in which the child had been enticed and snapped away from the porch of the house, the various places she had been hidden away, until her final removal to Surrentum. The extreme minuteness of the narrative was too extraordinary not to impress his listener’s mind with an inward conviction of its truth, but, as our reader is already acquainted with its tenor, it need not be recapitulated here. ‘Yes, noble Fabricius, Surrentum is full of potters,’ said Cestus, concluding, ‘and with one of them, called Masthlion, and his wife Tibia, was finally lodged your little maid; and, with them, a childless pair, she has grown up well cared for and tended, as I know well. She thinks herself their child to this hour, and it is time you took her to your own nest. Her poor feathers cannot hide her breed. She is known by the name of Neæra.’ Fabricius sat looking at the Suburan with the torture of his mind imprinted on his pale face. ‘Why do the gods permit such cruel deeds?’ said he; ‘for what reason was this wickedness perpetrated?’ ‘Money,’ said Cestus. ‘Money!’ echoed Fabricius, leaping to his feet in horror; ‘was she sold, then, for a slave?’