'Believe I that, O Athenian No, I do not believe--I know! and it is that beautiful and blessed assurance which supports me now. O Cyllene!' continued Olinthus, passionately, 'bride of my heart! torn from me in the first month of our nuptials,' shall I not see thee yet, and ere many days be past? Welcome, welcome death, that will bring me to heaven and thee!' There was something in this sudden burst of human affection which struck a kindred chord in the soul of the Greek. He felt, for the first time, a sympathy greater than mere affliction between him and his companion. He crept nearer towards Olinthus; for the Italians, fierce in some points, were not unnecessarily cruel in others; they spared the separate cell and the superfluous chain, and allowed the victims of the arena the sad comfort of such freedom and such companionship as the prison would afford. 'Yes,' continued the Christian, with holy fervor, 'the immortality of the soul--the resurrection--the reunion of the dead--is the great principle of our creed--the great truth a God suffered death itself to attest and proclaim. No fabled Elysium--no poetic Orcus--but a pure and radiant heritage of heaven itself, is the portion of the good.' 'Tell me, then, thy doctrines, and expound to me thy hopes,' said Glaucus, earnestly. Olinthus was not slow to obey that prayer; and there--as oftentimes in the early ages of the Christian creed--it was in the darkness of the dungeon, and over the approach of death, that the dawning Gospel shed its soft and consecrating rays. Chapter XVII A CHANCE FOR GLAUCUS. THE hours passed in lingering torture over the head of Nydia from the time in which she had been replaced in her cell. Sosia, as if afraid he should be again outwitted, had refrained from visiting her until late in the morning of the following day, and then he but thrust in the periodical basket of food and wine, and hastily reclosed the door. That day rolled on, and Nydia felt herself pent--barred--inexorably confined, when that day was the judgment-day of Glaucus, and when her release would have saved him! Yet knowing, almost impossible as seemed her escape, that the sole chance for the life of Glaucus rested on her, this young girl, frail, passionate, and acutely susceptible as she was--resolved not to give way to a despair that would disable her from seizing whatever opportunity might occur. She kept her senses whenever, beneath the whirl of intolerable thought, they reeled and tottered; nay, she took food and wine that she might sustain her strength--that she might be prepared!