“Old—that’s it—that’s her hold on these dancing girls! She keeps eternally young with her magic and has lured away half our daughters with her lies of a Christ, who can never die, and a love that is cheated of a young girl’s dreams. I am a silversmith—I know what I say—we have not sold one image this year, where we used to sell ten thousand.” The silversmith stroked his beard and displayed the bracelets and rings of his trade on his fat hand. “And the Lady Trefina left her great store of Roman gold, you say?” asked the bandit eagerly. “Does she keep that gold in her caves?” “Not she, she is too crafty. That’s safe with the money changers here and supports her schools for girls. Besides, it buys protection from the Roman captain here. He, who harms her, would be impaled on the Roman wall here for the hawks to pick his skull—” “But my band of wild boars could destroy a woman without harming her.” It was then the bandit leader repeated the lewd oath that had first startled the two Greek Christians. “But ply my young men with wine enough to-night, and we’ll prove her a courtesan breaking the law without the red cord about her brow, which the law enacts. Once prove on oath we’ve spent a night in her cave—the laws of Antioch will do the rest. The Roman guard here would drive them out like swine and throw them to the wild beasts in the hippodrome. We’d have our dancing girls back in Daphne Gardens and no more of this folly of heifers thinking they lead the herd.” The heads of the group went together over the wine tankards of the table in lowered tone with ugly laugh on the part of the mountain bandits and oily smile from the Antioch merchants. The bandit chief rose. He whistled. Half a dozen young fellows from the mountain clans with long swords in sashes and dirks in slings dangling from the right wrist appeared in the portal of the patio as if by magic. The chief signaled them to join the table, and more wine and yet more wine was ordered, as old and young heads went together in undertones above the center of the table. The two Greek Christians rose and passed out from the patio of the inn. “Who is this woman teacher of the Christian faith they mean to attack to-night?” demanded the aged man, Apollos. “Said I not the new wine was bursting the old bottles—the spiritual is defeating the carnal, and we need youth in fighting rank to keep the faith clean as a Damascus sword? Who is this woman?” “I know not, Apollos, unless one Thecla, a convert of Paul’s twenty years ago in Iconium, when I was youth and captured by these same bandits. She was said to have escaped to the caves near Antioch, where she set up schools for the maids, who run away from the Love Temples of Daphne Gardens. She toils so secretly few know how or where she dwells, except that a great Roman lady left her fortune enough to buy protection of Rome—”