“Simpler than that, Friend Roman,” responded a Greek priest of the Temple, whose head was shaved like a billiard ball and whose face wore the baffled look of one stunned by anger and fear. “There are thirty thousand secret chambers in the old Minos Temples ’neath the Island here, where all the Black Magic books of old have been hidden for a thousand years. The knave must have known the secret passage to these hidden underground caves, where ’tis like he hides now with all his followers and rocks this Isle. ’Tis known the Isle always rocks in the spring and autumn storms—and the old Greeks say ’tis from the Black Magic of the Masters in the Caves. The man wrought Black Magic against our Goddess. He ought to have been burned.” “I notice,” said another, “that he had no shadow. These demons have no shadow—’tis how we Greeks know demons in human form; and he always wore a ring with a mystic stone got from the Magicians of India to protect him.” “A plague on these cursed Gnostics and Essenes and Nazarenes,” gritted a Jew, joining the amazed group. “They are turning the whole world upside down. Feed them to the beasts, I say, as they did in the mad Nero’s day.” * * * * * Onesimus came out to the star-silvered night, dazed and dumb. Was there “no more Death”? He could not answer. He stood by the rocky coast of the calm painted sea with the Greek freed seaman and his daughter rescued from the Temple service. Snow was falling in a white mantle on the upper peaks of the opaline mountains. Was it “the Angel of the Snows” of which Apollos and Enoch taught? Hoar frost seemed to be lining the upper forested evergreens in the glint of jewels. Was it the Angel of the Hoar Frost? Mist was rising from the sea to meet the mist from the mountains in ghostly curtains. Was it the Spirit of the Mist wrapping its vesture around the departed Apostle? And the winds began to chant a mystic rune where the sea and rock met in the white fret of the night tide. Was it the Angel of the Winds, which, Apollos had taught, come out to gather earth thoughts for the weal or woe of earth? The Bishop of Ephesus fell to his knees and spent the rest of the night on the shore in prayer. And so the Bishop on his way home to Ephesus, accompanied by the slave seaman freed and the daughter redeemed from Temple service in Crete on their voyage to Thecla’s hospice on the Roman Road—paused at Patmos, the rocky desert isle, where John, the Beloved, lived in banishment and dreamed. The vessel beached at dawn and while the sailors took on a fresh cargo of fish, Onesimus asked the way to the hut of John, the exile.