“I do not speak, Christ speaks. Listen. I am called by the Church to go to Alexandria in Egypt, whither I sail within three days. Will you who are exiled from Rome come with me? There I can find you work to do.” “I have said that you are Cæsar,” answered Marcus. “Now it is sunset and I am free; accompany me to my house, I pray you, for there much business waits me in which I need counsel, who am overborne.” So presently the gates were opened as Titus had commanded, and they went forth, attended only by a guard of two men, walking unnoted through the streets to the palace in the Via Agrippa. “There is the door,” said the sergeant of the guard, pointing to the side entrance of the house. “Enter with your friend and, noble Marcus, fare you well.” So they went to the archway, and finding the door ajar, passed through and shut it behind them. “For a house where there is much to steal this is ill guarded, son. In Rome an open gate ought to have a watchman,” said Cyril as he groped his way through the darkness of the arch. “My steward Stephanus should be at hand, for the jailer advised him of my coming—who never thought to come,” began Marcus, then of a sudden stumbled heavily and was silent. “What is it?” asked Cyril. “By the feel one who is drunken—or dead. Some beggar, perhaps, who sleeps off his liquor here.” By now Cyril was through the archway and in the little courtyard beyond. “A light burns in that window,” he said. “Come, you know the path, guide me to it. We can return to this sleeper.” “Who seems hard to wake,” added Marcus, as he led the way across the courtyard to the door of the offices. This also proved to be open and by it they entered the room where the steward kept his books and slept. Upon the table a lamp was burning, that which they had seen through the casement. Its light showed them a strange sight. An iron-bound box that was chained to the wall had been broken open and its contents rifled, for papers were strewn here and there, and on them lay an empty leathern money-bag. The furniture also was overturned as though in some struggle, while among it, one in the corner of the room and one beneath the marble table, which was too heavy to be moved, lay two figures, those of a man and a woman. “Murderers have been here,” said Cyril with a groan. Marcus snatched the lamp from the table and held it to the face of the man in the corner. “It is Stephanus,” he said, “Stephanus bound and gagged, but living, and the other is the slave woman. Hold the lamp while I loose them,” and drawing his short sword, he cut away the bonds, first of the one and then of the other. “Speak, man, speak!” he said, as Stephanus struggled to his feet. “What has chanced here?” For some moments the old steward stared at him with round, frightened eyes. Then he gasped: “Oh! my lord, I thought you dead. They said that they had come to kill you by command of the Jew Caleb, he who gave the evidence.” “They! Who?” asked Marcus.