And now he stood in the prison hut of Rome, with the wolf harpies of the water-front wine shops outside, locked in by the Roman soldier, who knew there was fortune to be grasped by restoring a slave, with the threat ringing in his ears—“There is no escape from Roman power in all the known world; keep your tongue from blabbing—or I’ll cut it out with my dagger,” and the Lebanon boy had seen captives whose tongues had been cut by daggers. He knew this was no idle threat; but he did not know it was his boyish beauty that had cast the fatal net of danger round himself. * * * * * The boy stood with his head hanging, behind the locked door of the prison hut, like a fly caught in an evil spider web. He did not ascribe the net flung round him by dark eyes seen through the lattice of a palanquin to any spider maid; for he was still thinking with the knowledge of youth rather than age. He only knew the spider net had become strong chains binding him to the evil forces of the great Imperial City of the world, and that he had been flung into that net by a destiny uncontrolled by him except for the one act—when he had run away from his merchant master at Colossé. He was too deeply sunk in sudden despond and fear to notice the flickering of the shadows from the lifted breccia-stone lamp held in the Prophet’s hand, while the other hand shaded the old man’s defective vision peering at the ragged figure against the back of the locked door. All hope had flickered out for him with the turning of the double lock by that great key the Idumean carried. A voice spoke out of the dark, quiet, clear, and limpid as his own mountain streams in Lebanon: “Child, come here! Why are you troubled?” The boy raised his long-lashed blue eyes and looked across to see, not the little withered wisp of a man he had remembered as the Prophet, but a snow-white face illumined in an ethereal light and framed in an aureole of snow white hair. “The Lord Julius bade me prepare your supper.” The Prophet did not press his question. “There are the corn bread and the leben in the alcove,” he said, pointing to a dark corner of the stone wall, “and in one jar you will find the drinking water and in the other the fresh pulse.” The boy laid the meal on the rough table without a word and took his stand behind the Prophet’s stool. He was still dust spattered and torn from his fall. “Bring the couch to the table,” requested the Prophet. Thinking the Master wished to eat reclining, after the manner of the Judeans, the boy lifted the couch and placed it at the table. “Join me,” gently urged the Prophet. “I remember when I was a lad in Tarsus before I went down to study law in Jerusalem, we used to say of the mountain men, when they had broken bread and salt with us, they would be our friends forever, and never utter word, or think thought against host or guest. A good rule, child.”