Near the softening hours of the latter part of the day, while the awakening revel roared louder in the distance, he stopped before the ancient temple. The great hamper stood without the heavy entrance with three little Nazarene children tying ropes to the interstices between the fibers to pull it after them like a wagon. Marsyas looked at the hamper, glanced with intent eyes at the front wall,--a duplicate, except for the entrance, of the rear one,--and then rushed away in search of Ananias, the pastor. He found the pastor sitting outside the house that had given him refuge, cutting soles for sandals from a hide that lay by his side. The Nazarene raised a face so kindly and interested that the young man dropped down beside him and blundered through his story, in his haste to lay the plan for escape before the old man. "At sunset," he hurried on, "or when the night is sufficiently heavy to hide us, I can be let down in the hamper by the rear wall of the old temple--if thou wilt bid some of thy congregation to help me! I pray thee--let not thy belief deny me this help, for the life of my beloved, or mayhap her sweet womanhood, dependeth upon my escape!" He clasped his hands, and gazed with beseeching eyes into the pastor's face. He did not permit himself to think what he would do if the old man denied him. "It is manifest," Ananias said, after a pause for thought, "that only Nazarenes are to be confined herein. And thou, being a Jew, art here under false imprisonment. We shall not be glad to have thee suffer with us." "Yes, yes!" Marsyas cried. "I am falsely accused, and thou wilt avert an injustice--nay, by the holy death of the prophets!" he broke off, "if I could bear you all to refuge after me, I would do it!" "It is the spirit of Christ in thee, my son; nourish it! Yet be not distressed for our sake; He who holdeth the world in the hollow of His hand is with us." Marsyas awaited anxiously the old man's further speech, when he lapsed into silence after his confident claim of divine protection. "Give us the plan, my son, and we will help thee," he said at last. Marsyas took the old man's hand and lifted it impulsively to his lips. While yet the Serapeum was crowned with pale light, but the more squalid streets were blackening, Marsyas, led by Ananias, came to the old temple-house, and briefly unfolded his plan to three stalwart young Gentiles, who had turned their backs upon Jove and assumed the grace of Jesus in their hearts. The hamper with which the children had played all day was brought. Three troll-lines, each forty feet in length and borrowed from the fisher Nazarenes who lived along the bay, were securely knotted in three slits about the rim of the basket. Then, waiting only for the rapidly rising dusk, Marsyas, the three young Gentiles and the pastor climbed cautiously to the top of the side-wall of the old structure, and pulled up the hamper after them.