"For me! Thou becamest a prisoner to save me?" Marsyas repeated, astounded. "Because I need thee as much as thou needest me," was the frank admission. "What can I do for thee that thou shouldst need me?" Marsyas asked softly, but still wondering. "Hast--hast thou ever lacked friends so wholly that thou wast willing to purchase one?" Agrippa asked. "I am thy grateful servant; yet I am an Essene, poor, persecuted, homeless, hungry and heartbroken. What wilt thou have of me?" In that was more earnestness than blandishment, more appeal than offering. The young man published his helplessness and asked after the other's use of him. Agrippa was silent; after a pause Marsyas put out his hand and lifting the hem of the pagan tunic pressed it to his lips. The act could not fail to reach to the innermost of the Herod's heart. His head dropped suddenly into his hands, and the young Essene's touch rested lightly on his shoulder. Finally Agrippa raised his head. "Dost thou know my history, brother?" he asked. "From the lips of others, yes; but let me hear thee." "Thou art a just youth; nothing so outrages a slandered man as to pen his defense within his lips. Hear me, then. To be a Herod once meant to be beloved by the Caesars. In my early childhood, after the death of my young father, I was taken to Rome by my mother and reared among princes and the sons of consuls. Best of all my friends was Drusus, Caesar's gallant son, and we studied together, raced and gambled and feasted together, loved and hated--and fought together, and never was there a difference between us except in purse! "While he lived, I lived as he lived, but when he died his sire drove me out of Rome because I had been the living Drusus' shadow and it stung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substance perished. "When Drusus died my living died with him, and when I took ship at Puteoli for Palestine I owed three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar and forty tradesmen barked about my heels. "I had a ruined castle in Idumea. I forgot that I owned it till I was in actual want of shelter. Thither I went. But I was a young man, hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness of age. I should have put an end to myself, but Cypros, my princess, prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion. "She could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand and foot. I railed, but while I railed she wrote and sent a messenger, and in a little time an answer came. It was from my brother-in-law, Herod Antipas, who is tetrarch of Galilee. Cypros had besought him to help us. He wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard to reconcile that letter with the man I met, and begged me come and be his prefect over Tiberias. I went." The prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if his account were expurgated.