“What do I here?” he repeated. “This is the answer to that question,” he continued, tenderly lifting her hand that she might see how thin it was. “You are slowly dying of starvation, and yet you ask what do I here. I have come to snatch you from death by carrying you away to the Roman camp.” Vashti looked at him with a fearful joy in her eyes. “Oh! if you could! if you could! I was just going to Simon of Gerasa to implore him to let me leave the city----” “You shall not ask Simon’s leave. That I have entered the city safely, you can see for yourself. By what means I have entered by that same means shall you leave.” He smiled cheerfully as he closed and barred the gate. “To-morrow about this time,” he added, “you shall be feasting in the Roman camp, you, and your mother, and little Arad.” But at the mention of this last name Vashti wept like one heartbroken. “Arad,” she said, “Arad--is--is----” Crispus guessed the cause of her emotion. “What! is the poor little fellow dead?” “If you had but come yesterday!” she sobbed. “Oh! if you had but come yesterday, my brother might be living.” Seeing that she had scarcely strength to stand, Crispus lifted her in his arms, and carried her into the court. “No, not that side!” said she, shivering, as he was about to enter the house by way of the room where her dreadful discovery had taken place. “Not that side!” So Crispus carried her to a chamber that opened from a different part of the court, and producing the leathern wallet carried by every Roman soldier, he drew from it figs and bread and made her eat before he would let her say another word. When she had finished the simple repast she told him the terrible story of a child slain by a famishing mother to satisfy her appetite; and Crispus listened, knowing from deserters’ tales that deeds equally dark had been perpetrated in other households besides this. “And because I have reproached her--was I wrong in so doing?--my mother has cursed me, and has bidden me leave her and go to my friends, the Romans. I call her mother,” she added, “for I cannot easily rid myself of the familiar word.” “Is she not really your mother, then?” asked Crispus, receiving the news with the same satisfaction that Vashti herself had felt at the discovery. “She has told me--and there was in her manner something that convinces me she is speaking the truth--that I am her daughter by adoption only.” “And I believe it,” said Crispus emphatically, “if only for this reason, that you are so different from her in every way; and you have another proof of it in this, that your name does not appear in the public genealogical rolls as the daughter of Hyrcanus. What were Miriam’s words to you?”