THE DELIVERANCE There followed time for diverse and earnest meditation for Marsyas: He criticized himself sarcastically, for permitting himself to be so easily entrapped, and cast about him for means of escape. He found by successive trials that the siege was perfect. Half of Alexandria's garrison had been posted about the district. The more he considered his predicament, the more an atmosphere of impending danger weighted the air of the Nazarene community. He did not seek the hospitality of the Nazarenes, because he had not come to the point of admitting that he was to remain among them. At nightfall, while the roar of the reveling city without swept over the community, he hoped to find some unguarded spot in the Roman lines, but his hope was vain. With his attention thus forced upon the people penned in with him, he began to wonder if there might not yet be some profit in counsel with his fellows, hemmed in for some purpose by Flaccus. He found the inhabitants gathered in a broad space in one of the streets, where at one time a statue or a fountain might have stood, but after a few minutes' listening, he heard only prayers and words of submission to the unknown peril threatening them. Angry and disappointed he flung himself away from the gathering, to spend the night in the streets. But after the first gust of his anger, it was brought home to him very strongly, that these people were gifted with a new courage, the courage of submission--to him the most mysterious and impossible of powers. Led from this idle conclusion into yet deeper contemplation of the Nazarene character, he found himself admitting astonishing evidences in their favor. He had known not a few of them. Stephen had been beatified, the most exalted, yet the sweetest character that he had ever known. Lydia, wavering and hesitating between Judaism and the faith of Jesus of Nazareth, struggled with fine points of conscience, and persisted, in the face of terror,--the most potent controlling agent, Marsyas had believed, over the spirit of womanhood. The Nazarene body at Ptolemais had displayed before him a humanness in subjection, that, in spite of his own resolute disposition, seemed triumphant, after all. They had preached peace, and had maintained it in the face of the most trying circumstances. On ship-board, he had been shown that they were long-suffering. About him now, while Alexandria rioted and reveled in excess, their order and decorum were highly attractive. These were excellences that he did not willingly see; circumstances and environment had forced their recognition upon him. At a late hour, he was sought and found by their pastor, the tall old teacher, whom he had come to consider as a man whom, for his own spiritual welfare, he should shun.